My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since I'd woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that.

— Dee Williams

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn't always liberate you. Instead, it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up - it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions.

— Dee Williams

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn't always liberate you. Instead, it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up -- it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions.

— Dee Williams

Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were. There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.

— Dee Williams

Perhaps the current state of my health should have raised a bright red caution flag, but instead it fired me up. I wanted to do what I wanted. I didn't care if hefting plywood and climbing ladders weren't on my doctor's recommended list of activities, or if I was foolhardy to think I could lift a fifty-pound roll of tar paper into and then out of my car. Furthermore, I was going to do it because it sounded like a blast, like the best possible way to have fun.

— Dee Williams

Sometimes the word 'gratitude' feels too thin to explain things.

— Dee Williams

That obstinate sense of independence was the biggest challenge I face in building my little house (that, and not always knowing what I was doing). I was stubborn in the way I hated to ask for help. Some people are good at it, asking friends or their husbands to collect ginger ale and crackers at the grocery because they feel nauseous, or standing on the side of the road with a tire iron in one hand, hoping someone will stop to change their flat tire. I'm not like that; I'd rather have a rough stick dragged across my gums than walk to the neighbor's house to borrow sugar or ask for help jump-starting my car.

— Dee Williams

The Internet is dumb. The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can't begin to map the complexity of our lives, or how we each affect others.

— Dee Williams

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

— Dee Williams

The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings.

— Dee Williams