Tennessee Williams Quotations

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

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

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.

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

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

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?

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

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

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

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

Time is the longest distance between two places.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you--gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--and I can! I'm determined to do it--and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof--is there?

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.

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

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.

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

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

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.

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

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

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

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

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

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

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

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

Maybe they weren't punks at all, but New York drama critics.

It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses.

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

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

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.''

Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!

You've got many refinements. I don't think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with.

I'm not in sympathy with Communism except for populations which are in a state of peasantry, actually hungry and starving. The ideal state for me is some form of Socialism, which doesn't yet exist, as far as I know, which doesn't repress the arts, or any race. Consequently I'm not a political person ... except that I'm a revolutionary.

I'm tired and it's taking an increasing amount out of me, more than I have to give physically. And that's why I want to move to Sicily and buy that little farm and raise a flock of goats and geese. I find it peaceful ... and it would be a nice way to end life.

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

My '60s plays were as good as most of the other plays I've written ... except I wasn't in a condition to refine them, to help in the rehearsal, or do anything. I was hardly conscious of what was going on except during the hours of the day when I was actually writing ... and that was with the aid of speed.

It's to a writer's advantage to contain within himself elements of each sex, or any sex. It's to his advantage because it makes him able to write from the female point of view as well as the male. In some cases, of course, you will find some homosexual writers who can only write from a f - - -'s point of view. But I don't regard myself as a f - - -! Some people may. Also audiences wanted escapism. They don't like too much protest or criticism of their way of life.

I'm much more conscious of historical events since the '60s. In the '60s, I was insulated by my own addictions, my own lifestyle, from what was going on in the world. After I recovered I was amazed at certain people who had died. I hadn't noticed that they had gone. Not friends ... I'm talking about public figures who had passed away.

Nothing human disgusts me unless it's unkind.

I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.

Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that.

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

Talent? What is talent but the ability to get away with something?

If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets.

Nobody sees anybody truly but only through the flaws of their own ego.

Oh you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you

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

The helpless can't help the helpless.

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.

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic.

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.

My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

You take it for granted that I am in something that I want to get out of.

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.

I’m a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry. It doesn’t have to be called a poem, you know.

Men don't want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.

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.

Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!

I don't think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we're all ambiguous sexually.

I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of.

But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary

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.

How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

Morning can always be counted on to bring us back to a more realistic level.

Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!

I saw that it was all over, put away in a box like a doll no longer cared for, the magical intimacy of our childhood together

Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental. It is not realistic.

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!

Girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man.

Like a Cat on a hot tin roof

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.

Val: Why do you go out there? Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice. Val: What advice do they give? Sandra: Just one word- live!

Since that day, when people have spoken to me of "genius", I have felt the inside pocket to make sure my wallet's still there.

The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.

People go to the movies instead of moving.

The biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched with sick envy.

Oh, Jacques, we're used to each other, we're a pair of captive hawks caught in the same cage, and so we've grown used to each other. That's what passes for love at this dim, shadowy end of the Camino Real.

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.