Joy Williams Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• You 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 crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.

  Joy Williams

  Believe, Eye, Animal

  Joy Williams (2015). “Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals”, p.1, Rowman & Littlefield

  7 Copy quote

• Writers 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

  Prayer, Writing, Silence

  Joy Williams (2015). “Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals”, p.177, Rowman & Littlefield

  4 Copy quote

• One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies.

  Joy Williams

  Thinking, Young Writers, Young

  4 Copy quote

• For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.

  Joy Williams

  Beautiful, Song, Eye

  Joy Williams (2015). “Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals”, p.123, Rowman & Littlefield

  6 Copy quote

• I 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 throughout the city, this is a place that’s been expanding musically and culturally…People coming from Europe and Canada-there are all kinds of different cultures and different music being represented here. It continues to blossom.

  Joy Williams

  Country, Thinking, Nashville

  7 Copy quote

• Many writers today are wanderers. There is not only an unhousedness in language - how to convey, to say nothing of converge - but an unhousedness of place.

  Joy Williams

  Today, Language, Wanderers

  4 Copy quote

• Writers 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 enough

  Joy Williams

  Grateful, Writing, Shadow

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 2

First

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin