Quotes from Tia Williams

He's the human equivalent of a spam email,

Every time one of her terribly dysfunctional relationships imploded, she was confused and stunned. And then with fresh hope, she'd fling herself at another jackass.

Listen, caring about things don't maek you soft. IT makes you alive.

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.

My mom told me. And you were young and scared and trying to be tough—and I promised you that you'd never go back. I promised. And she sent you back." She gulped dryly. "Shane, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything I said yesterday. I'm sorry for blaming you for all these years. For hating you. I hated you so much.

Eva turned to face him. "I'm so sorry." "No, I'm sorry. That's what I came to New York to say. I'm sorry I broke my promise. And I'm sorry I didn't find you the second I was released. But by then, you'd published your first book. You were a success, and I didn't want to ruin it. Back then, I was convinced that I ruined

I wanna be everything," he said, his mouth against her ear. "Wanna be the reason you light up. I wanna make you laugh, make you moan, make you safe.

I wanna be where all your paths end." He nipped her earlobe. "I wanna do everything you do to me." He pulsed his finger then, and she came with a shuddery cry. "You're hired," she breathed.

You know you're the turtle, right? The one who comes and goes as he pleases while I wait for you?

You can't imagine the utter bottomlessness of my disinterest in your opinion.

Prison is the school of the unlearned lesson.

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.

The burden isn't on me to explain it, Rich. The burden's on y'all to fix it. Good luck.

Maybe that's what real adult love was. Being fearless enough to hold each other close no matter how catastrophic the world became.

Because even bigger than her sadness was her determination.

Given that those sinning, raping plantation owners had both white babies and Black babies, everyone was six degrees from being one or the other. Which was what scared southern white people the most.

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.

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.

MAKE AMERICA NEW YORK.

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.

Listen. Caring about things doesn't make you soft. It makes you alive.

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.

She roller-set Lizette's hair before she went out on her "money dates" (You're for sale—just fucking say it…).

There's an alternate universe where I never left, he thought.