Tennessee Williams Quotes & Sayings

To change is to live, to live is to change, and not to change is to die. — Tennessee Williams

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life. — 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 that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding. — 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

Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion. — 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

One does not escape that easily from the seduction of an effete way of life. You cannot arbitrarily say to yourself, I will now continue my life as it was before this thing, Success, happened to me. But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all little vanities and conceits and laxities that Success is heir to - why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position to know where danger lies. — Tennessee Williams

Don't you understand? I was PROCURING for him. — Tennessee Williams

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life. — Tennessee Williams

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 — Tennessee Williams

The great and only possible dignity of man lies in his power deliberately to choose certain moral values by which to live as steadfastly as if he, too, like a character in a play, were immured against the corrupting rush of time. Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence. As far as we know, as far as there exists any kind of empiric evidence, there is no way to beat the beat the game of being against non-being, in which non-being is the predestined victor on realistic levels. — Tennessee Williams

Marriage is an economic arrangement in many ways, let's face it. — Tennessee Williams

Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.

--Blanche Dubois — 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

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation. — Tennessee Williams

She laughs frequently and wildly and with a sort of precocious, tragic abandon. — Tennessee Williams

I'll be all right in a minute, I'm just bewildered - by life ... — Tennessee Williams

His beauty was notable even in a province where the lack of it is more exceptional in a young man. — Tennessee Williams

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

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

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

Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light ... — Tennessee Williams

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

Hysteria is a natural phenomenon, the common denominator of the female nature. It's the female weapon and the test of a man is his ability to cope with it. — Tennessee Williams

I can't guarantee that a lobotomy would stop her - babbling!! — Tennessee Williams

The trouble is that I am being bullied and intimidated by my own success and the fame that surrounds it and what people expect of me and their demands on me. They are forcing me out of my natural position as an artist so that I am in peril of ceasing to be an artist at all. When that happens I will be nothing because I cannot be a professional writer. — Tennessee Williams

Human beings dream of life everlasting, that's the reason! But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven. — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, the man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all the little vanities and laxities that Success is heir to
why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position of knowing where the danger lies. — Tennessee Williams

Everything diminishes with time, my darling, but my feelings for certain people pierce me daily, and it is no illusion that they center me and let me know who I am, and let me know that I have loved and have been loved, no matter how badly or clumsily. — Tennessee Williams

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

A man like that is someone to go out with - once - twice - three times when the devil is in you. But live with? Have a child by? — Tennessee Williams

But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

The show is over. The monkey's dead! — Tennessee Williams

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

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. — Tennessee Williams

And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle ... — Tennessee Williams

Life is important. There is nothing to hold onto. A man that drinks is throwing his life away. Don't do it, hold on to your life. There is nothing else to hold on to ... — Tennessee Williams

My head don't work any more and it's hard for me to understand how anybody could care if he lived or died or was dying or cared about anything but whether or not there was liquor left in the bottle and so I said what I said without thinking. In some ways I'm no better than the others, in some ways worse because I'm less alive. Maybe it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive that makes me sort of accidentally truthful
I don't know but
anyway
we've been friends ... And being friends is telling each other the truth ... — Tennessee Williams

Keep awake, alive, new. Perform the paradox of being hard and yet soft. Survive without calcification of the tender membranes. Be a poet. Be alive. — Tennessee Williams

Come on, indulge yourself. You got nothing to lose that won't be lost. — 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

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away. — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

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? — Tennessee Williams

I gave up visiting my psychoanalyst because he was meddling too much in my private life. — Tennessee Williams

Let's go down and swim in that liquid moonlight. — Tennessee Williams

The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment. — Tennessee Williams

The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love. — Tennessee Williams

We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we're doing, if we're selling it, if the listener likes us. Just tell the story and go on to the next one. All of us are full of stories the world might want to hear. — Tennessee Williams

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

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? — Tennessee Williams

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

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast. It's like nothing else. It's like a love affair, it goes on and on, and doesn't end in marriage. It's all courtship. — Tennessee Williams

Margaret: Oh you weak people, you weak, beautiful people! - who give up. What you want is someone to [she turns out the rose-silk lamp] take hold of you. Gently, gently, with love! And I do love you, Brick, I do!
Brick [smiling with charming sadness]: Wouldn't it be funny if that was true? — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

Perhaps the most vivid recollection of my youth is that of the local wheelmen, led by my father, stopping at our home to eat pone, sip mint juleps, and flog the field hands. This more than anything cultivated my life-long aversion to bicycles. — Tennessee Williams

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

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

Kill off all my demons and my angels might die too. — Tennessee Williams

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

Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles. — Tennessee Williams

For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura
and so goodbye ... — Tennessee Williams

Security is a kind of death. — Tennessee Williams

Why, you're not crippled, you just have a little defect - hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it - develop charm - and vivacity - and - charm! — 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

What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death.

- Big Daddy — Tennessee Williams

Success and failure are equally disastrous. — Tennessee Williams

We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going! — 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

A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting. — Tennessee Williams

America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Everywhere else is Cleveland. — Tennessee Williams

Big Daddy: Ignorance - of morality - is a comfort. — Tennessee Williams

Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door. — Tennessee Williams

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

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.
- Blanche Scene II — Tennessee Williams

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it! — Tennessee Williams

The work of a writer, his continuing work, depends for breath of life on a certain privacy of heart. — Tennessee Williams

Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down ... So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function! — Tennessee Williams

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else. — 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

And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. — Tennessee Williams

When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking. — 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

Nothing's more determined than a cat on a hot tin roof ... — Tennessee Williams

Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early
almost before you're half-acquainted with life
you meet the other. — Tennessee Williams

Well, sooner or later, at some point in your life, the thing that you lived for is lost or abandoned, and then ... you die, or find something else. — Tennessee Williams

Life that winter in Rome: a golden dream, and I don't mean Rafaello and the mimosa and the total freedom of life. Stop there: What I do mean is the total freedom of life and Rafaello and the mimosa and the letto matrimoniale and the Frascati when morning work was over. — 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 know, then that the public Somebody you are when you 'have a name' is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath — Tennessee Williams

Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick. — Tennessee Williams

The Jefferson is such a dignified hotel / There is no such thing. — Tennessee Williams

It's no tragedy, Freckles. Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are. — Tennessee Williams

One man has one great true thing in his life. One great good thing that is true! — 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

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

You know it don't take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail? — Tennessee Williams