Beatriz Williams Quotes & Sayings

Is this different? Does love make lovemaking better? Does Nick feel this holy consummation, this wonder and beauty, this eternity, the way I do? Or is sex simply like this, designed by Nature to fool us all into multiplying? — Beatriz Williams

I wish you all the happiness in the world, Frau Grant. I hope our paths meet again. — Beatriz Williams

Most of all, Violet will know the smile: a slow and confident widening of a too-abundant mouth. This woman is something more than beautiful, something alchemical, an unstable mixture of rare elements bound together by nerve and charm. Am I interrupting something dreadfully important? she asks, with the ironic warmth of a woman who knows in her bones that she is always the most important object in the room. — Beatriz Williams

Love. Really, it's responsible for the most vulgar excesses. — Beatriz Williams

...you're dazzling. I'm dazzled, I'm upside down and inside out and...God, Vivian. I don't know what to say. There aren't words. I just want to crawl back under the blanket and spend my life doing that with you. And everything else we did today. — Beatriz Williams

It's always different, isn't it, until it turns out to be the same. — Beatriz Williams

She zipped her lips. — Beatriz Williams

compunction, and her cigarette dangles from her scarlet-tipped hand. She hasn't — Beatriz Williams

What makes you Vivian.' I liked the way he said my name, all throaty on the V's, all stretched to its rightful three syllables. — Beatriz Williams

...my fingers were trembling as I pressed the number eleven on the elevator panel; my heart was smashing violently against my ribs with the consciousness of reckless guilt. Or rather, the consciousness of an absence of guilt: that I didn't care, didn't give a damn. That it was my turn to break things, to hurt someone irreparably. — Beatriz Williams

Graham Pendleton is tall, athletic, charming, glamorously handsome. He excels at all sports, even the ones he hasn't tried. — Beatriz Williams

How can we bear this? I asked. (He took the hat from my hands and placed it gently on my head.) Because we have to. Because you will know my heart is somewhere in the world, beating for you. — Beatriz Williams

I don't know how [books] accumulate like that. They're part rabbit, I think. — Beatriz Williams

You don't have a civilized self.' 'Yes, I do. Look at me now, quite calm and under control, while you stand right there, a few feet away from me, and the light glows against your skin. Turning you to gold. I don't think there's any higher proof of the power of civilization, that I'm not kissing you senseless. — Beatriz Williams

Well, that's the thing about choices, isn't it? There are always more to make. I've never seen a street where you couldn't cross to the other side. — Beatriz Williams

Didn't It belong to her just a little bit, not in a material way but in the way a house always belonged to all those who have lived and loved and suffered in it? As if it had kept behind a small part of your soul. — Beatriz Williams

This is the switching point, Caspian,' she whispered in his shirt. 'This is me, switching tracks.' 'I guess that's one thing to call it. A new one on me. We could start a new slang. Let's go back to my place and switch tracks. — Beatriz Williams

What about the look in your eyes?' 'God knows. I was just trying to make you better.' 'Well, you did that. You've always done that. Now, go to bed. I don't dare help you. It's all I can do right now, just looking at you, falling out of my dressing gown like that. — Beatriz Williams

You have no idea, do you? No idea what it's like to have no money, no way on God's earth to beg, borrow, or steal it. No idea what it's like to have no choice. No idea what it's like to sit there and stare at the bare walls and realize you've got to do something, and whatever you do, it's the wrong thing. You could take some money, propose to a girl, and break her heart later, and in so doing lose the love of the single most breathtaking woman you've ever met, the love of your lonely godforsaken life. — Beatriz Williams

Except for a daily visit with the other doctors on our morning rounds, I hadn't seen or spoken to him. But that didn't mean I didn't miss him like the winter earth missed the sun. — Beatriz Williams

I was hazy with wine, hazy with Nick. I nestled into my seat and marveled at his endlessness, only inches away, his infinite capacity to shelter me. — Beatriz Williams

(He remembered resting against her afterward, listening to the beat of her heart, taking her breath into his lungs, and thinking that he was the luckiest man in the world, that you couldn't connect with a human being any more perfectly than that. And sure enough, he'd been right.) — Beatriz Williams

I was not going to wait any longer for my life to start. I was going to start my life on my own. — Beatriz Williams

Well, nothing's a life or death struggle anymore, is it? The era of honor and sacrifice is over." I looked again at the O'Brian novels, lined up in order. "Jack Aubrey's full of human failings - so's Maturin - but they have principles, and they'd give their lives for them. Or for each other. Now it's all about money and status and celebrity. Not that people haven't always cared about those things, but it used to be considered venal, didn't it?" I shrugged. "It's like nobody bothers to grow up anymore. We just want to be kids all our lives. Collecting toys, having fun. — Beatriz Williams

He didn't have to explain what it was. It was there between them, that invisible bond, that strange sense of ease, as though she had known him always. As if her life would be immeasurably the worse for not having him in it. — Beatriz Williams

Turn your head. No, the other way. Out the window.' I turn to the steamed-over plate glass, the shadowed buildings across the street. 'What, like this?' 'Now move your eyes and look at me. Just your eyes. Tilting up a bit. Yes.' He breathes out. 'Just like that. that, Miss Lily Dane, of only the best sorts of places, that is why I couldn't go back to sleep last night. — Beatriz Williams

I can't bring myself to open my eyes. I am an ember, glowing from the inside out. The dark and silent room keeps everything else at bay, every sensation, except the two of us, Nick and Lily, who have just made love. — Beatriz Williams

proxy, and by this time the house is filling up at last. — Beatriz Williams

All men are brutes. — Beatriz Williams

...the predominant odors of sauerkraut and schnitzel that had always made me feel a part of my mother's life, the part before she met my father and the brackets of disappointment that marked each side of her mouth had become permanent. — Beatriz Williams

Besides, it seems to me, since my pleasure is more or less a foregone conclusion, the main object of the exercise ought to be your pleasure. A rather elusive creature, I've heard. Fascinating sort of quarry.' 'Wait a minute. You're hunting down my orgasms?' His laughter burst out like a rifle salute. 'Kate. You damned magnificent creature.' He rolled onto his back, bringing me with him. 'Yes, my darling. That's exactly what I'd like to do, on and on until the end of my life. — Beatriz Williams

I thought, how magical, the first glimspe of snow. By March I would be sick of it, but here in this November instant those tiny flakes swirled with the unspeakable purity of a divine gift. — Beatriz Williams

I subscribed to the general theory that the worst room in the best hotel was better than the best room in a second-rate hotel. — Beatriz Williams

Love isn't a mistake. But I know true love is rare enough that when you find it you fight for it. Marry me, Kate. Come back to Charleston with me and be with me for the rest of our lives. — Beatriz Williams

one can no longer distinguish between history and reality after the absinthe goes in the punch. — Beatriz Williams

Her father had admired her mother without ever truly understanding her. And her mother--her mother had relied on her father without appreciating him. There had been a gulf between them that couldn't be bridged by all the goodwill in the world. — Beatriz Williams

Your father owns a history company?" I say teasingly.

Nick laughs. "No. Everyone on Wall Street has a history degree, though you'd never know it, the way they keep making the same mistakes, crash after crash. — Beatriz Williams

You have a softa?' 'Somewhere underneath all these boxes.' 'These boxes you won't unpack.' 'I will now.' Again, he gave his words time to settle in and sink to the bone. I listened to the cadence of his breath and stared at the nubby white ceiling. I will now. I will unpack for you, Vivian, because if New York is your home, it must be mine, too. — Beatriz Williams

I knew exactly where he existed in my heart; I had no idea where he existed in the universe. — Beatriz Williams

This was what she couldn't get enough of, not if she lived forever: Harry on her skin, Harry's grateful kisses on her neck, Harry and Olive, teeming and sated, brimming over with each other, as if this house and this world had been built by God's hands for their love alone. — Beatriz Williams

The floorboards creaked as he stepped toward her. She counted each one, because they belonged to Harry, because the floorboards were so lucky to bear the touch of Harry's feet. — Beatriz Williams

Now's your chance, Lily. Remember to ask him about himself. They love that. And for God's sake don't talk about books. — Beatriz Williams

And there it was, a snap in his chest, the audible noise of his best intentions cracking in half and cracking again, a chain reaction of thick cracks causing hairline cracks, causing the whole goddamned works, the whole vast machinery of his human willpower, to crumble downward into his abdominal cavity, where it lay pretty much useless. — Beatriz Williams

...she wears a summer nightgown, white cotton trimmed with a token bit of lace at the neck and sleeves. She dislikes the itchiness of the lace against her skin, the sense of delicate entrapment. — Beatriz Williams

Here's the thing about New York, the thing I love most: there is no such substance as silence. If you ever stop talking, and he stops talking, the city takes over for you. A siren forms a distant parabola of sound. A door slams. The old couple in 4A argues over who will answer the telephone. The young lovers in 2C reach an animalistic climax. A million other lives play out on your doorstep, and not one of them gives a damn about your little problems. Life goes on and on and on. — Beatriz Williams

I want you to keep this. I want you to keep this in your trunk in your awful grubby room in the nunnery, and to take it out every night when I'm gone and look at it and say, Harry loves me, Harry's coming back in June to take me away to Europe, Harry's going to make up for all this work and misery and make me as happy as a man ever made a woman. — Beatriz Williams

I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out at my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems. — Beatriz Williams

Listen to me, Violet. I want more than this. I want to lie next to you at night and worship you. I want to watch you by day and see what you're capable of, you astonishing woman, you bloody beautiful thing. I want to count every scintillation of you. — Beatriz Williams

Vati, Vati, I miss you so. She didn't say it aloud, but her throat vibrated with the words. — Beatriz Williams

One can follow the sun, of course, but I have always thought that it is best to know some winter, too, so that the summer, when it arrives, is the more gratefully received. — Beatriz Williams

A clean break, like an amputation. Eventually, you realized you could survive without all your limbs, that you could function and even thrive, because human beings were designed to take a battering. And though you weren't whole, you at least had a son. And though it sometimes seemed as if your heart had stopped beating, you at least knew that somewhere in the world, another heart was beating for you. — Beatriz Williams

What would that be like, not to give a damn what the other women think? — Beatriz Williams

I find a woman with brains enormously attractive and not threatening in the least. A pretty face is nice, too, but having somebody to converse with and share thoughts for thirty or forty years is very appealing to me. — Beatriz Williams

Jazz, Miss Lily, is the bastard child of music, born from the old Negro work song by a whole lot of fine daddies who ain't about to claim it. — Beatriz Williams

Funny thing, falling in love. You can't quite explain the difference between this--kissing the girl you love, having sex with the girl you love--and all the kissing and all the sex that came before. You can't describe the difference between her flesh and that flesh, her hips and their hips, her gasp and those gasps. You can't parse the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the experience, the units that make up the whole, any more than you, the untrained viewer, can explain why the Mona Lisa is the Mona fucking Lisa. You just stand back and take it in and say, Wow, so this is art. You lie back in your bed, you hold her next to your chest, her ribs next to your ribs, her breath and your breath, and you say, So this is love. — Beatriz Williams

I think I've done a reasonable job of conforming to the conventions of this world. I've made adjustments, I've modernized, I've adapted. But one thing I refuse to concede is my right to punch the lights out of any man who dares to insult you. Not because you're helpless; God knows you're not. But because no man can stand by idly and see his idol defamed. — Beatriz Williams

My mother once told me that a lifetime of good enough was a fair price to pay for a single moment of pure happiness. This is my moment. Don't take that away from me. — Beatriz Williams

She's not beautiful not really only very good at looking beautiful. — Beatriz Williams

You're greedy, her mother had said to her quietly, that last night in New York, as she had packed her things. Greedy and selfish. It's not the knowledge you want, you can have that from your journals. you want to be in the newspapers, you want to be Marie Curie, you wat to think you're different from all of us. That all other women are silly and complacent and conventional, except you, brilliant you. — Beatriz Williams