Tennessee Williams Quotes

It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.
Tennessee Williams
When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working.
Tennessee Williams
Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
Tennessee Williams
I don't ask for your pity but just your understanding - no not even that -no. Just for your recognition of me in you and the enemy time in us all.
Tennessee Williams
Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.
Tennessee Williams
The future is called "perhaps " which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
Tennessee Williams
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.... Success is shy-it won't come out while you're watching.
Tennessee Williams
High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Tennessee Williams
We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life.
Tennessee Williams
Security is a kind of death.
Tennessee Williams
I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything anything I ever did I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.
Tennessee Williams
Luck is believing you're lucky.
Tennessee Williams
I can't stand a naked light bulb any more than I can stand a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Tennessee Williams
Time is the longest distance between two places.
Tennessee Williams
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee Williams
Luck is believing you're lucky.
Tennessee Williams
I can't stand a naked light bulb any more than I can stand a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Tennessee Williams
Time is the longest distance between two places.
Tennessee Williams
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee Williams
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee Williams
Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
Tennessee Williams
Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.
Tennessee Williams
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Tennessee Williams
The future is called "perhaps " which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
Tennessee Williams
Don't look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
Tennessee Williams
I have always been pushed by the negative.... The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.
Tennessee Williams
Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.
Tennessee Williams
Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.--Blanche Dubois
Tennessee Williams
Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.
Tennessee Williams
People go to the movies instead of moving.
Tennessee Williams
Princess, the great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have the pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy. The spectators and the performers.
Tennessee Williams
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
Tennessee Williams
...human beings dream of life everlasting. But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven.
Tennessee Williams
In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.
Tennessee Williams
...the human animal is a selfish beast...
Tennessee Williams
It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature
Tennessee Williams
Luck is believing your lucky.
Tennessee Williams
He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity.
Tennessee Williams
I don't believe in "original sin." I don't believe in "guilt." I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents. This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.
Tennessee Williams
This was a respect in which he paid due homage to the wise old spirit of the late Emiel Kroger, that romantically practical Teuton who used to murmur to Pablo, between sleeping and waking, a sort of incantation that went like his: Sometimes you will find it and other times you won't find it and the times you don't find it are the times when you have got to be careful. Those are the times when you have got to remember that other times you will find it, not this time but the next time, or the time after that, and then you've got to be able to go home without it, yes, those times are the times when you have got to be able to go home without it, go home alone without it...
Tennessee Williams
What's talent but the ability to get away with something?
Tennessee Williams
We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama.
Tennessee Williams
We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
Tennessee Williams
I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.
Tennessee Williams
Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter.
Tennessee Williams
If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.
Tennessee Williams
The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.
Tennessee Williams
Unattached and aimless, these old men are always infatuated with little certainties and regularities such as those that ordered the life of Mr. Krupper as seen from outside. Habit is living. Anything unexpected reminds them of death.("Hard Candy")
Tennessee Williams
Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
Tennessee Williams
You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.
Tennessee Williams
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
Tennessee Williams
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in
Tennessee Williams
These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?
Tennessee Williams
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.
Tennessee Williams
What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...
Tennessee Williams