Claire
https://www.goodreads.com/clairemwilliams
when my brothers & i asked for video games, the church gave us books. we were too poor to want what we wanted.
“....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.”
―
“We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.”
―
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.”
―
“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
“You are always asking me why the people don’t do something, why they put up with this brutality, why they don’t rise up against it, this and that. Okay. You’re exhausted, you’re shocked, you’re sick to your stomach, and you feel dirty. These things are what people feel every day here—and you expect them to get themselves organized? You expect them to fight back? Could you fight back at this moment?”
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
― What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
“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.”
―
―
Claire’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Claire’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Polls voted on by Claire
Lists liked by Claire























