Quotes from Katie Williams

I want to only imagine things, not know them.

People want to believe bad things, I tell myself, glaring around at my classroom. They want to believe the most shocking story. They see you as the worst version of yourself.

We're quiet then, quiet enough that I can hear the books around me creaking in their shelves, rustling their pages, stretching their spines, as if they have something to add to the conversation. Which some of them probably do.

In this overcrowded, underwhelming world, any gesture, no matter how slight, expressing that one person recognizes another person is a nice thing indeed.

I let her clasp my hand and stare at me with her big, dark eyes. Because I know that when people comfort you, they're really just comforting themselves.

a type of violence, that much charm continuously wielded, a blade that severed you from your own good sense.

But there is knowing something and then there is feeling it. For adults, these are two different things. For children, they are one.

There is no origin for the word love. It is one of the first words and has always meant only itself.

Or will she appear down below, a pale blinking girl in the dark lake of the parking lot?

That's the thing about having a baby: they are a part of you that is outside of you, so you can love them in the way you can't stand to love yourself.

Unhappiness breeds unkindness,

What they don't understand is that it condition is a symptom of me. That I am a stone buried deep in the ground, something that will never grow, no matter how good the dirt.

I feel it, that expansiveness specific to childhood, the breath filling you all the way up to the puff of your cheeks, the feeling that each breath is good.

Angela had been the first of us. She'd been found on a park bench by some dawn jogger or dog walker, her throat slit, her sandals lined up next to her bare feet. And did you ever notice how these are the people who are always discovering the bodies, these people whose lives are so orderly that they can rise early enough to find a whole other human being dumped on the ground?

Prohibition! Everyone loves a flapper dress or a fake tommy gun, but who remembers the thousands of people who went blind drinking unregulated wood alcohol?

Mystery is essential, they say. Mystery. Well, I was in one of those right now, and I couldn't say that I liked it very much.

Cruelest are the punishments we visit upon ourselves.

It was easy to make fun of Angela. And if it was unkind, which of course it was, it was also a way to ask without asking, Am I like her? No, you're not like her. Okay, phew, you're not like her, either. I don't need to tell you how many women's friendships are built upon this firm foundation.

It was one of the unfair things of life--that your child had to look like your ex-husband.

These people whose lives are so orderly that they can rise early enough to find a whole other human body just dumped on the ground...

You will take a long trip and you will be very happy, though alone.

What they don't understand is that my condition is a symptom of me. That I am a stone buried deep in the ground, something that will never grow, no matter how good the dirt.

Because I know that when people comfort you, they're really just comforting themselves.

Wes slid two more cigarettes out of the pack, offering one to me. "I don't smoke." "Why not? It gives you superpowers, you know." "What? Like cancer?" I said