126 Quotes & Sayings By 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 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. Tennessee Williams

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. Tennessee Williams

The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady, " they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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. I will try. 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. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block. Tennessee Williams

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do--then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing. Tennessee Williams

Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft. The metal point's gone from my pen, there's nothing left but the feather. Gutman: That may be true. But what can you do about it? Byron: Make a departure. Gutman: From yourself? Byron: From my present self to myself as I used to be! Gutman: That's the furthest departure a man could make! Tennessee Williams

Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressivee--that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live! " That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition. . Tennessee Williams

To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

The low-tone clarinet moans. The door upstairs opens again. Stella slips down the rickety stairs in her robe. Her eyes are glistening with tears and her hair loose about her throat and shoulders. They stare at each other. Then they come together with low, animal moans. He falls to his knees on the steps and presses his face to her belly, curving a little with maternity. Her eyes go blind with tenderness as she catches his head and raises him level with her. He snatches the screen door open and lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat. Tennessee Williams

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... Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks! Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages. Tennessee Williams

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! Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant.... Tennessee Williams

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. Tennessee Williams

But nothing happened there now of a nature to provoke a disturbance. There were no complaints to the management or the police, and the dark glory of the upper galleries was a legend in such memories as that of the late Emiel Kroger and the present Pablo Gonzales, and one by one, of course, those memories died out and the legend died out with them. Places like the Joy Rio and the legends about them make one more than usually aware of the short bloom and the long fading out of things. ("The Mysteries of the Joy Rio"). Tennessee Williams

Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic. Tennessee Williams

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

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. Tennessee Williams

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

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

She lives in a world of her own — a world of — little glass ornaments… Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

The apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire-escape, a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation. Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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! Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

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!. Tennessee Williams

I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding — not even that — no. Just for some recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all. Tennessee Williams

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.... Tennessee Williams

When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken. Tennessee Williams

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness. Tennessee Williams

I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. Tennessee Williams

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... Tennessee Williams

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

He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in - anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you - you here - waiting for him! Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! - you call it - this party of apes! Somebody growls - some creature snatches at something - the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from beng made in God's image, but Stella - my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art - as poetry and music - such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is we're approaching . Don't - don't hang back with the brutes! . Tennessee Williams

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. Tennessee Williams

Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered. Face it — pitiful monster. Tennessee Williams

...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... Tennessee Williams

CORNELIA: -Sit down. Don't leave the table. G R A C E: -Is that an order? C O R N E L I A: -I don't give orders to you, I make requests. G R A C E: -Sometimes the requests of an employer are hard to distinguish from orders. [She sits down] Tennessee Williams

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"). 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

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

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

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors. 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

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

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

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

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

Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama. Tennessee Williams

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

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

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

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

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

Luck is believing your lucky. Tennessee Williams

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

...the human animal is a selfish beast... Tennessee Williams

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

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

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks. 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

People go to the movies instead of moving. Tennessee Williams

Ignorance of mortality is a comfort. 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

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

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

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