Tennessee Williams Quotes

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.... Success is shy-it won't come out while you're watching.

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world.

You have a spark of anarchy in your spirit and that's not to be tolerated. Nothing wild or honest is tolerated her! It has to be extinguished...

CORNELIA: -Sit down. Don't leave the table.GRACE: -Is that an order?CORNELIA: -I don't give orders to you, I make requests.GRACE: -Sometimes the requests of an employer are hard to distinguish from orders. [She sits down]

You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!

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...

Time is the longest distance between two places.

I’ve been accused of having a death wish but I think it’s life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessly, on any terms whatsoever.

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

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.

It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.--Blanche Dubois

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

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?

The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: "Hello - Goodbye!" and no address.

Don't look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.

People go to the movies instead of moving.

Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.

...human beings dream of life everlasting. But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven.

Laws of silence don’t work…. When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don’t work, it’s just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

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")

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?

In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.

He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity.

You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the most embarrassing people in the world for they continually remind you of inequities which we accept as the proper thing. The sight of an ancient woman, gasping and wheezing as she drags a heavy pail of water down a hotel corridor to mop up the mess of some drunken overprivileged guest, is one that sickens and weighs upon the heart and withers it with shame for this world in which it is not only tolerated but regarded as proof positive that the wheels of Democracy are functioning as they should without interference from above or below. Nobody should have to clean up anybody else’s mess in this world. It is terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service.

To you, whoever you are, when I am gone — remember to be kind tonight to some lonely person. For me.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here.

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.

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.

The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting!--Which it never can be....

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

The panic disappeared under those soothing old fingers and the breathing slowed down and stopped hurting the chest as if a fox was caught in it, and then at last Mr. Kroger began to lecture the boy as he used to, Pablo, he murmured, don't ever be so afraid of being lonely that you forget to be careful. Don't forget that you will find it sometimes but other times you won't be lucky, and those are the times when you have got to be patient, since patience is what you must have when you don't have luck. ("The Mysteries of the Joy Rio")

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

I can't stand a naked light bulb any more than I can stand a rude remark or a vulgar action.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.

It was useless trying to explain to Cecila that poetry wasn't a commodity, that it could never be bought or sold, that it was, in fact, unteansferrable, remaining forever a part of the one who wrote it.

-The little comfort of love?-Is that comfort so little?-Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.

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...

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.

I go to the movies because – I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life.

A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young and believing

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in

I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - Don't turn the light on!

Chance, you've gone past something you couldn't afford to go past; your time, your youth, you've passed it. It's all you had and you've had it.

When things don't change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.

What's talent but the ability to get away with something?

I don't mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don't regard a home as a...well, as a place, a building...a house...of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can...well, nest.

Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

...love, all at once and much, much too completely. It's like you suddenly turn a blinding light on something that had always been half a shadow...