The Visiting Privilege Quotes

“The best books were those uninhabited by those who wrote them.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Silence was a thing entrusted to the animals, the girl thought. Many things that human words have harmed are restored again by the silence of animals.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“We are here to prepare for not being here.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Plants have lived in the Now for a long time but they still have to have some things explained to them.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“He wants to apologize but does not know for what. His life has been devoted to apologetics. It is his profession. He is concerned with both justification and remorse. He has always acted rightly, but nothing has ever come of it.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Were they really selling postcards of the mummies in that place," Dan asked. "Yes sweetie pie, there were," Mr. Muirhead said. "In this world there is a postcard of everything. That's the kind of world this is.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Love had different beginnings but always the same end. Someone was going to get hurt.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“He said, “We are all asleep and dreaming, you know. If we could ever actually comprehend our true position, we would not be able to bear it, we would have to find a way out.” The girl nodded. She was embarrassed. People would sometimes speak to her like this, intimate and alarming, as though she were passionate or thoughtful or well read. The puppy smelled wonderful. She picked him up and held him. “We deceive ourselves. All we do is dream. Good dreams, bad dreams…” “The ways that others see us is our life,” the girl said. “Yes!” the breeder exclaimed.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“He said, “We are all asleep and dreaming, you know. If we could ever actually comprehend our true position, we would not be able to bear it, we would have to find a way out.” The girl nodded. She was embarrassed.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“The battle is always between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, is it not? Imagination is not what it’s cracked up to be. Sam decided to forget the petty, bourgeois rite of eating food out of another’s orifices for a while. He decided to just love Elizabeth instead.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Perhaps understanding was more important than Love, and perhaps the highest form of understanding was the understanding of oneself, one’s motives and desires and capabilities. Constance thought about this but the idea didn’t appeal to her much. She dismissed it.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Of course it was all just whistling in the dark, but sometimes she would conclude by saying that despite their clumsy grief and all the lost and puzzling years that still lay ahead of them, the earth was no less beautiful.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Above me, billboards advertise gun shows, mobile-telephone plans and law firms that specialize in drunk-driving cases. I looked into renting a billboard recently but my application was rejected.

THE GREATEST PROSPERITY COMES TO ITS END,
DISSOLVING INTO EMPTINESS; THE MIGHTIEST
EMPIRE IS OVERTAKEN BY STUPOR AMIDST
THE FLICKER OF ITS FESTIVAL LIGHTS
-Rabindrath Tagore

it would have said.

The billboard people told me they didn't know who Rabindranath Tagore was and could not verify anything he might have thought. He was certainly foreign and his sentiments insurrectionary. As well, what he was saying wasn't advertising anything. This night I see that space I tried to claim depicts black-and-white cows painting the words EAT MORE CHICKEN on the side of a barn.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye… 1 CORINTHIANS 15:51–52”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Jenny’s father frowns at Mrs. Coogan. He does not wish to be aware that Jenny lies. To him, it is a terrible risk of oneself to lie. It risks control, peace, self-knowledge, even, perhaps, the proper acceptance of love. He is a thoughtful, reasonable man. He loves his only child. He wills her safe passage through the world. He does not wish to acknowledge that lying gives a beat and structure to Jenny’s life that the truth has not yet justified. Jenny’s imagination depresses him. He senses an ultimatum in it.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead fought continuously and as bitterly as vipers. Their arguments were baroque, stately and, although frequently extraordinary, never enlightening.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“Sam and Elizabeth met as people usually meet. Suddenly, there was a deceptive light in the darkness. A light that blackly reminded the lonely of the darkness.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“The girl is twenty-five. It has not been very long since her divorce but she cannot remember the man who used to be her husband. He was probably nice. She will tell the child this, at any rate.”
― Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories