Claire
https://www.goodreads.com/clairemwilliams
It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.
“....night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.”
―
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.”
―
“Baldwin told the story again and again of standing on Broadway and being told by Delaney to look down. Delaney asked him what he saw, and Baldwin said a puddle. Delaney said, 'Look again,' and then Baldwin saw the reflections of the buildings, distorted and radiant in the oil on the puddle. He taught me to see, Baldwin said, and that 'what one cannot or will not see, says something about you.”
― A Chance Meeting : Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967
― A Chance Meeting : Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967
“Maybe the trick is not to define yourself as a container for your experiences, your thoughts. Maybe it's to assume you are larger than the things you have felt over a series of years, that your history is not a list of things your body has done or been present for, that your family is not people who you spent a lot of time around as a child or carry your genetic code. Maybe the trick is to push violently at your own boundaries, to find your own contradictions, and use your teeth and nails to destroy what separates you from something else.
I am trying.”
― The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries
I am trying.”
― The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries
“And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after.”
― Between the World and Me
― Between the World and Me
“You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world that holds offices, and all society... In short, you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentiment falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself... To work in silence and with all one's heart, that is the writer's lot; he is the only artist who must be a solitary, and yet needs the widest outlook upon the world.”
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Claire’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Claire’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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