Quotes from Tia Williams

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.

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.

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.

In second grade, she'd snuck up on a napping Eva and colored her entire forearm with a highlighter. Because she was "important.

When I'm comatose from writing and mothering, when I'm hurting too badly to cook, talk or smile, I curl up with 'alone' like a security blanket. Alone doesn't care that I don't shave my legs in the winter. Alone never get disappointed in me.

He knows Gia's tougher than him. By virtue of being a woman, she's stronger. GIrls are given the weight of the world, but nowhere to put it down. The power and magic born in that struggle? It's so terrifying to men that we invented reasons to burn y'all at the stake, just to keep our dicks hard.

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

I had him arrested and put away. Good fucking riddance. I believe he went to juvenile detention. They told me it was his third time. Serial predator.

The girl threw up a Black Power fist and bounced.

But she'd never wanted kids. Books were her kids.

After I accidentally broke my arm, and my foster mom…" He paused, jaw working. "When I survived the crash on the way to the hospital and my foster mom didn't, I started breaking my arm on purpose. Drinking all day. And I decided that I didn't deserve good things.

I want to be the thought that lulls you to sleep. The memory that gets you off.

Know why I have nice skin? No man stressing me out

Are you speaking metaphorically," asked Cece, "or are you dating a man named Alone?" "You can't be serious." "My doorman is a SoundCloud rapper named Sincere. One never knows.

squeezes, their secret I love you code.

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

I like being single," Eva continued quietly. "I don't want anyone to have to really see me.

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

And I remember that I'm not lonely. I'm alone. When I'm comatose from writing and mothering, when I'm hurting too badly to cook, talk, or smile, I curl up with 'alone' like a security blanket. Alone doesn't care that I don't shave my legs in the winter. Alone never gets disappointed by me." Eva sighed. "It's the best relationship I've ever been in.

Women don't get to be bad boys.

Girls are given the weight of the world but nowhere to put it down. The power and the magic born in that struggle? It's so terrifying to men that we invented reasons to burn y'all at the stake just to keep our d**ks hard.

Books were her kids.

Lizette felt that since Belle Fleur was full of Black folks who looked white, numbers suggested that many whites could be Black. It was all a fine line in the South, she'd say. 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.

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.