Top 100 Tia Williams Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If you listen hard enough, you can tell what a person needs from you. And if you give them what they need, you’ve got a friend for life.”

— Tia Williams

52. “Also, she missed her mom. They’d just chatted on the phone, and she’d sounded so serious. And distracted, as if she were speaking to Audre from galaxies away. Audre knew her mother, so she knew what was wrong. What was missing. And there was only one person who could help.”

— Tia Williams

53. “Acting sober is an art,” he explained. “The trick is to say very little and be very still. And if you do that too well, sleep inevitably happens.”

— Tia Williams

54. “I know you twist history to make things easier for you, but I’ve never made you do anything. Do you ever think about your role in all of this?”

— Tia Williams

55. “You put me back together when I was in pieces. You gave me confidence, and reminded me that I was lovable. You saved me.”

— Tia Williams

56. “Long ago, she’d learned that life could be bitterly disappointing if allowed. There were blows and stumbles, but your job was to stay interested in the world.”

— Tia Williams

57. “The burden isn’t on me to explain it, Rich. The burden’s on y’all to fix it. Good luck.”

— Tia Williams

58. “If you have the opportunity to make a moment meaningful, why not take it?”

— Tia Williams

59. “Shane wasn’t far removed from the man he’d been when he passed out on Gayle King’s shoulder as Jesse Williams announced that he’d won the 2009 NAACP Award for Outstanding Fiction.”

— Tia Williams

60. “This is that family feeling, he thought. Of total acceptance, belonging to people. A connection that eclipsed everything.”

— Tia Williams

61. “Don’t you want to know why?” With twinkly eyes, he said, “Tell me later.” “Bold of you to assume there’ll be a later.” “Bold of you to assume there won’t be.”

— Tia Williams

62. “He’d forgotten, because he had no experience with being needed.”

— Tia Williams

63. “All she wanted was to escape this repetitive, redundant hell.”

— Tia Williams

64. “Listen, caring about things don’t maek you soft. IT makes you alive.”

— Tia Williams

65. “Now, I never got married. No, no, no, I ain’t one of those funny ladies. I just won’t fold myself up tiny so as not to put off no man.”

— Tia Williams

66. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go home and feed my two kittens, Growth and Metamorphosis.”

— Tia Williams

67. “When we were together, I felt like someone else had stolen all your smiles before me.”

— Tia Williams

68. “How,” she started, “do you explain this to people?” “I don’t.” “That simple, huh?” Eva was awed. “It’s ours,” he said simply. “Sacred.”

— Tia Williams

69. “Finally, Shane angled the microphone up and spoke five words. “This is for the misfit.”

— Tia Williams

70. “These partygoers hadn’t been the cool kids growing up. They’d spent their adolescence buried in art books, scrawling poems into steno pads during recess, living full stories in their heads. Distracted by their artistic micro-obsessions, many forgot to learn how to engage with the world. They were too busy studying life, storing up their notes to use later in a novel, a song, a script, a painting. They were observers, not joiners.”

— Tia Williams

71. “All these years.” Genevieve’s voice sounded reedy. “All these years, I thought he was a coward. A liar. I hated him.” “Well, who’s to hate if it ain’t him?”

— Tia Williams

72. “The concept of ‘father’ just feels made up, like Santa or the Easter Bunny.”

— Tia Williams

73. “I cut myself. He didn’t do it. And I’d been taking drugs – your drugs, or getting them from your boyfriends – my whole life. I wasn’t your innocent little baby.”

— Tia Williams

74. “She’d hoped he’d be her forever guy. She was so tired of starting over with a new man every couple years, only to be abandoned for unspecified reasons. When bad things happened over and over, it was a sign. God was telling you to change. Your attitude, your hair, your address.”

— Tia Williams

75. “And here’s what’s really good,” continued Belinda. “The publishing industry has a hard time processing Black characters unless we’re suffering.”

— Tia Williams

76. “Like when Spotify plays a song you haven’t heard since childhood, and it reminds you who you are. Like “Oh yeah, I’m a person who knows all the words to Will Smith’s ‘Wild Wild West.”

— Tia Williams

77. “Because even bigger than her sadness was her determination.”

— Tia Williams

78. “Somehow, he’d snaked into her head and sunk his fangs into her brain, poisoning her with hope. A cruel trick.”

— Tia Williams

79. “Eva bit her lip, trying to keep her guilty, thrilled smile from spreading. Shane. She’d divulged all to him.”

— Tia Williams

80. “So instead of writing about Gia, a witch who uses her powers to fight for a man, I’m fighting for myself.”

— Tia Williams

81. “The girl threw up a Black Power fist and bounced.”

— Tia Williams

82. “Shane and Eva were her writer children. And as their mama, she had a right to get to the bottom of their situationship.”

— Tia Williams

83. “The whole afternoon was delicious – so much so that Shane was already nostalgic for it before it had even ended.”

— Tia Williams

84. “Nooo. Not today, of all days. She’d begged her mom not to invite her boyfriends over. And Lizette always assured her that she’d stop, that their home would be a no-man zone.”

— Tia Williams

85. “Books were her kids.”

— Tia Williams

86. “Just say it,” Eva said with a smile. “I’ve never said it. To anyone.” “It won’t hurt, I promise.” Shane grinned, a heart-stopping thing. Then laid his face on her breasts, closing his eyes. “Ready?” he asked. “Ready.” “I love you,” said Shane. “Dramatically, violently, and forever.” She kissed the top of his head, smiling brighter than the sun. “I’ve always loved you,” he whispered. “What a coincidence,” she whispered back. “I’ve always loved you, too.”

— Tia Williams

87. “How do you think she got there?” Shane’s voice was an unsteady mix of regret and pain. “I found her number in your phone, and I called her. When she got to the house, she called the paramedics. And the police. And sent me to prison.” The blood drained from Eva’s face. “No.” “Ask her,” he said gently. “Ask her.”

— Tia Williams

88. “But inexplicable things happened to him, and Shane accepted life’s oddities. He didn’t know if this made him an adventurer or an idiot, but one thing was true – nothing interesting ever came from a clear path of rationality.”

— Tia Williams

89. “I like being single,” Eva continued quietly. “I don’t want anyone to have to really see me.”

— Tia Williams

90. “Whether I lose you for years or wake up to your face every morning. I love you. You’re my home. And I want you forever.”

— Tia Williams

91. “They both giggled, until they’d forgotten what was funny. Eventually, they lapsed into comfortable silence, enjoying the sun.”

— Tia Williams

92. “But she’d never wanted kids. Books were her kids.”

— Tia Williams

93. “She remembered that they were never sober. Shane drank to seek oblivion; she stayed high to outrun pain. They did it together – but she cut herself in private.”

— Tia Williams

94. “I know too much,” he said, his words weighted with old pain. The kind that makes a home on the fringes of your thoughts forever.”

— Tia Williams

95. “Lizette didn’t lay eyes on Audre till she was two. It was cruel. She hadn’t raised her daughter to have such ghastly manners. But in the end, maybe Genevieve had been right to sever ties. Genevieve was Eva now, and she and Audre were both thriving. Everything turns out the way it oughta, she thought.”

— Tia Williams

96. “The first time it happened was when Shane was seven, the terrible event that had sent him hurtling from foster home to foster home, where he learned new crimes, new dysfunctions, new ways to be unloved. That was one piece of it. The other was every time he broke his arm, it hurt, but when it dulled, he’d be shot through with this remarkable insight about himself. It was the only time he saw who he was, crystal clear.”

— Tia Williams

97. “This new Eva, the free Eva, was tired of being rattled by life. How long had she lived being too terrified to show her real self? There was power in showing the messiness of her life and what it took to hold it together.”

— Tia Williams

98. “No matter how dizzying his professional highs, Shane just couldn’t resist the pull of the tide sweeping him out. Self-destruction was always imminent. No, if writing had been the cure, the past fifteen years would’ve looked very different. He wouldn’t have taken so long to get sober. He might’ve picked a permanent place to live, put down actual roots. Invested in Seamless or Spotify. He’d have gotten serious about the business of living.”

— Tia Williams

99. “She kept shifting it around her hips. It was a sample-size 2, which was really a 0, and Eva was a size 4 but a PMS 6.”

— Tia Williams

100. “There’s an alternate universe where I never left.”

— Tia Williams