Joy WilliamsI think I had the same notion most people have, which is it’s simply a town that percolates around country music. Though country-music history is deep and richly steeped throughou… ▶374HumanityThoughtTime
Joy WilliamsNothing the writer can do is ever enough. ✨ Joy Williams (2015). Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, p.178, Rowman & Littlefield365HumanityReflection
Joy WilliamsNothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible.302Truth
Joy WilliamsWords at night were feral things. ✨ Joy Williams (2016). The Visiting Privilege, p.247, Profile Books292Reading
Joy WilliamsWriters when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits. ✨ Joy Williams (… ▶261HumanityPoliticsReflection
Joy WilliamsA writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.252Love
Joy WilliamsWriters end up writing stories-or rather, stories' shadows-and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough3310Humanity
Joy WilliamsThere is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance. ✨ Joy Williams… ▶285Humor
Joy WilliamsWhy does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that … ▶242HopeHumanityReflection
Joy WilliamsYou must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do. ✨ Joy Williams (1978). The changeling, Doubleday Books298Reading
Joy WilliamsGood writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face. ✨ Joy W… ▶277HumanityReadingReflection
Joy WilliamsBut who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.249Time
Joy WilliamsYou don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the… ▶238HumanityLifeReflection
Joy WilliamsThe story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.219Death
Joy WilliamsYou have never seen such animals as these who without a sound or a sign carry you off. You race with them across the long familiar ground that in that moment seems so glorious, so… ▶219ThoughtTime
Joy WilliamsOne writes to find words' meanings.132Philosophy
Joy WilliamsAs you grow older, you'll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends. ✨ Joy Williams (2016). The Visiting Privilege, p.36, Profile Books2110Reading
Joy WilliamsThe writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of not… ▶198HumanityReadingReflection
Joy WilliamsWhat a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What go… ▶146HumanityTime
