Authors:

Joy Williams Quotes - Page 2

All Quotes Writing
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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You May Also Like: