Tennessee Williams Quotes

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bou...

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

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

You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.

When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working.

I don't mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don't regard a home as a......

The future is called 'perhaps', which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the importa...

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

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. Wh...

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

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

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

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

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

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

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

You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harm...

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewr...

We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door...

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

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

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

I don't ask for your pity but just your understanding - no not even that -no. Just for your recogn...

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

It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.

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

You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. ...

All good art is an indiscretion.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Luck is believing you're lucky.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is les...

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

The future is called "perhaps " which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the importa...

The apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire-escape, a structure whose name is a touch of a...

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

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.

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

To be free is to have achieved your life.

Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama.

Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.

I have always been pushed by the negative.... The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typ...

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

Security is a kind of death.

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

Luck is believing your lucky.

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we fo...

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you w...

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with g...

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.... Success is shy-it won't come out w...

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

Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you s...

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to ...

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobb...

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magici...

I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I giv...

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

Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to th...

To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge mid...

Time is the longest distance between two places.

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

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter.

The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Bec...

She lives in a world of her own – a world of – little glass ornaments…

People go to the movies instead of moving.

When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and h...

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits so...

Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.--Blanche Dubois

Chance, you've gone past something you couldn't afford to go past; your time, your youth, you've pas...

I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding – not even that – no. Just for some recog...

Princess, the great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or ...

Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, b...

I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.

I’ve been accused of having a death wish but I think it’s life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessl...

You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 968...

Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell ...

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

CORNELIA: -Sit down. Don't leave the table.GRACE: -Is that an order?CORNELIA: -I don't give orders t...

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

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do--then go ahead and d...

Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation.

Unattached and aimless, these old men are always infatuated with little certainties and regularities...

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

These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. ...

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation o...

It was useless trying to explain to Cecila that poetry wasn't a commodity, that it could never be bo...

The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think th...

I know! WHY! – Am I so catty? – Cause I’m consumed with envy an’ eaten up with longing? –

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's ...

Laws of silence don’t work…. When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of...

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

Laws of silence don't work....When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws o...

What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as lon...

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

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.