Some people make you feel better about living. Some people you meet and you feel this little lift in your heart, this 'Ah', because there's something in them that's brighter or lighter, something beautiful or better than you, and here's the magic: instead of feeling worse, instead of feeling 'why am I so ordinary?', you feel just the opposite, you feel glad. In a weird way you feel better, because before this you hadn't realised or you'd forgotten human beings could shine so.
Niall WilliamsA truly extraordinary work: vivid, passionate and utterly compelling. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is raw as a wound. It opens a world that is strange, brutal and poetic at once and ultimately achieves the kind of spirit-healing few novels do
Niall WilliamsThere are only three great puzzles in the world, the puzzle of love, the puzzle of death, and, between each of these and part of both of them, the puzzle of God. God is the greatest puzzle of all.
Niall WilliamsWhen youโre different youโve got two choices. You can stand out or you step back.
Niall WilliamsWe tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time, to leave the world for a while, or go more deeply into it. We tell stories to heal the pain of living.
Niall WilliamsThe water is this marvellous blue. Itโs so blue that once you see it you realise youโve never seen blue before. That other thing you were calling blue is some other colour, itโs not blue. This, this is blue. Itโs a blue that comes down from the sky into the water so that when you look in the sea you think sky and when you look at the sky you think sea.
Niall Williams