91 Quotes by Joy Williams

Writers are like eremites or anchorites – natural-born eremites or anchorites – who seem puzzled as to why they went up the pole or into the cave in the first place.

She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter.

You should have changed if you wanted to remain yourself but you were afraid to change.

A side benefit of the new and developing technologies is that soon we won’t have to feel guilty about the suffering and denigration of the animals because we will have made them up.

Pearl suspected God didn’t love human beings much. She suspected that what He loved most was Nothingness.

Every living thing suffers transfiguration. Yes, until the creation of Eve, Adam had fondled beasts.

The woman regarded him. Her hands shook. She was really very drunk. “I know everybody in this room,” she said. “And you know what I see when I look at them? I don’t see anybody I know.

Perhaps the human race had yet to be born. Perhaps it was all a deception by the government. It hadn’t happened yet. This life was nothing but the womb.

What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes.