James Grissom Quotes & Sayings

My places were emotional, primarily. I wrote of locales in which I had lived, or in which I imagined I could live, but the topography was primal and sexual and terminal. It bore no distinct architecture or design or dialect. It was merely human and in peril, which is to say universal. But on Royal and Coliseum and Vista--streets I cannot relinquish--I found my places and I dreamed a narrative. Can I go there and find it again?"--Tennessee Williams — James Grissom

I pray to the emptiness that is the page," Tenn said, "and I pray to the emptiness that is my mind, and I ask that I be filled. — James Grissom

How can we know that we have talent until our words or the manner in which we speak them moves someone? — James Grissom

If you're a writer, you write. If you don't, you're dead. You have no home, no reason to be offered a seat at any table, and no reason to live. — James Grissom

All of us are seeking a home, and I don't mean where we were born, or where we now live and have things, but where we can do the big things, the right things. Where we belong, where we fit, where we're loved."--Tennessee Williams, "Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog — James Grissom

Memory, of course, is unreliable, often evil, but it is the source of our identity."--Tennessee Williams — James Grissom