Quotes & Sayings About Tennessee

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

The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger.
- The Spirit of Tennessee Journalism — Mark Twain

Some people say that science clears up all the mysteries for us. In my opinion it only creates more! — Tennessee Williams

It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance. — Tennessee Williams

I have a bit of an obsession with the 1950's and all those actors from Montgomery Clift to James Dean and Anthony Perkins. Just that whole era of Tennessee Williams to Elia Kazan. — Sebastian Stan

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

Tennessee Williams knew about the South, but he would clean it up and lie about it. — Paul Mooney

One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well; I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River. — Jon Meacham

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

Nature is not on the side of a girl over thirty — Tennessee Williams

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

Do you want to be successful? Nurture your talent. — Tennessee Ernie Ford

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

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

I have met a great many people, nearly all friendly, many of whom I was fairly intimate with in one way of another, but nobody has seemed as close to me in spirit as you are. That was why I thought only of you at those times when my life seemed in danger of falling to pieces. — Tennessee Williams

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

I met her last summer on a moonlight boat trip... — 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

A fire smokes the most when you start pouring water on it. — 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'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

But mash whiskey took some of the dry away and made Augustus feel nicely misty inside - foggy and cool as a morning in the Tennessee hills. He seldom got downright drunk, but he did enjoy feeling misty along about sundown, — Larry McMurtry

Whenever Congress was in session, we were in Washington. So four months out of the year we were in Tennessee and the rest of the time in Arlington, which is where my mom grew up. Then, of course, in 1992 we moved into the vice president's house in D.C. I was 15 then. — Kristin Gore

A bedroom is just as nice as whoever sleeps in it with you. — Tennessee Williams

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory. — Tennessee Williams

We hear a lot about rebuilding Detroit, and we just spent $70 billion to bail out the auto industry - well, they need to be cost competitive, too. If they have high-cost energy, those suppliers are going to move to Japan or Mexico instead of Michigan and Tennessee. — Lamar Alexander

Doing a thing call the Hillbilly Rock, some say it came from Elvis down in Tennessee. — Marty Stuart

A lot of people don't know that my background is completely classical. For a while there, I was all about Moliere and the Greeks and Brecht and Tennessee Williams. — Katy Mixon

Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years! — Tennessee Williams

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

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. — Tennessee Williams

Both teams are making mistakes. Florida's making these itsy-bitsy little ones, and Tennessee is making huge, gigantic mistakes. — Gary Danielson

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

Sign at a Tennessee highway: When this sign is under water, this road is impassable. — Dave Barry

On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience. — P.G. Wodehouse

Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with! — Tennessee Williams

I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart. — Ashley Monroe

Blanche:
No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe! — Tennessee Williams

If you can't be yourself, what's the point of being anyone else? — Tennessee Williams

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks. — Tennessee Williams

Why is it so damn hard for people to talk? — Tennessee Williams

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

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

In all cases of monstrosity at birth anaesthetics should be applied by doctors publicly appointed for that purpose ... Every successive year would see fewer of the unfit born, and finally none. But, it may be urged, this is legalized infanticide. Assuredly it is; and it is urgently needed. — Tennessee Celeste Claflin

Tennessee was cursed. Initially, she assigned the devastation of Tennessee, the blaze and the disease, to justice. The whites got what they deserved for enslaving her people, for massacring another race, for stealing the very land itself. Let them burn by flame or fever, let the destruction started here roll acre by acre until the dead have been avenged. But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her troubles on herself? — Colson Whitehead

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

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

The world is violent and mercurial--it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love--love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love. — 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

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

I could be on 52nd and Third in Manhattan up and ask a strange for directions and they will help you, that's a rural heart. Your car breaks down in the middle of Iowa or somewhere, or Tennessee where I'm from, people want to help each other. Given each opportunity, you see how people come together. — Rodney Atkins

Sixteen Tons was written eight years before I recorded it. — Tennessee Ernie Ford

...the human animal is a selfish beast... — 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

Life is such a mysteriously complicated thing that no one should really presume to judge and condemn the behavior of anyone else. — Tennessee Williams

I felt a great depression, probably because I never believed that anything would continue, would hold. I never thought my advance would maintain its ground. I always thought there would be a collapse immediately after the advance. — 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

I don't even want to call it God. I just want to call it connecting with something that's greater than I am. So that's the biggest thing from Tennessee - the spirit. — Valerie June

I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway. — Pat Summitt

Good lord, look at you!" he cried, delighted at my grubbiness. "What have you been doing? You're filthy!" He looked me up and down admiringly, then said in a more solemn tone: "You haven't been screwing hogs again, have you, Bryson?"
"Ha ha ha."
"They're not clean animals, you know, no matter how attractive they may look after a month on the trail. And don't forget we're not in Tennessee anymore. It's probably not even legal here - at least not without a note from the vet." He patted the chair beside him, beaming all over, happy with his quips. "Come and sit down and tell me all about it. So what was her name - Bossy?" He leaned closely and confidentially. "Did she squeal a lot? — Bill Bryson

Being a theater actor, I've done a lot of plays where I've seen someone else play the same role in another production. Especially with the classics: Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams. — Jacki Weaver

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

Pabst Blue Ribbon. I'm from Johnson City, Tennessee. I gotta go Pabst. — Matt Czuchry

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 was writing country songs, but I wasn't listening to country yet. I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee, so my roots are country, you know? But I didn't know where those songs came from or where they fit. — Kelsea Ballerini

Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? — Herman Melville

Rationally considered, nothing can be more absurd than the baptism of infants under any circumstances. No statement, no matter by whom it may be said to have been uttered, can make that true which is radically false. If an innocent child, unconscious of good or evil, irresponsible to God and man, incapable of thought or action, is not already, in accordance with Christian theology, a member of Christ, then no vicarious promise or priestly ablution can make him one. For if this were so, a similar ceremony under devil worship could make him a member of Satan. — Tennessee Celeste Claflin

One of the teams (Tennessee) that jumped us had the same game that we had. They're down, they're playing at home and they win by a field goal. Another team (Florida) that jumped us wasn't even playing. They were home eating cheeseburgers and they end up jumping us. That befuddles me, — Charlie Weis

In Washington I'm thought of as a conservative, but in Tennessee I'm thought of as a Bolshevik. — Howard Baker

Growing up on a mountain in Tennessee, I spent most of my childhood outside. — Rachel Boston

I was a few miles south of Louisville when I planned my journey. I spread out my map under a tree and made up my mind to go through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part of South America; but it will be only a hasty walk. I am thankful, however, for so much. — John Muir

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

After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school. — Chris Parnell

I tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers! — Tennessee Ernie Ford

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

So successfully have we disguised from ourselves the intensity of our own feelings, the sensibility of our own hearts, that plays in the tragic tradition have begun to seem untrue. For a couple of hours we may surrender ourselves to a world of fiercely illuminated values in conflict, but when the stage is covered and the auditorium lighted, almost immediately there is a recoil of disbelief. "Well, well!" we say as we shuffle back up the aisle, while the play dwindles behind us with the sudden perspective of an early Chirico painting. By the time we have arrived at Sardi's, if not as soon as we pass beneath the marquee, we have convinced ourselves once more that life has as little resemblance to the curiously stirring and meaningful occurrences on the stage as a jingle has to an elegy of Rilke. — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

Memphis can be thought of connected as much to Mississippi and Arkansas as it is to Tennessee, if not more so. William Faulkner once observed that Mississippi extends from a Memphis hotel room to the Gulf of Mexico. — Tav Falco

For (strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even) critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, a great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-century novel, whatever) that we find beautiful; and, then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty. — Daniel Mendelsohn

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. — Tennessee Williams

I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that's what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker. — Elizabeth Strout

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

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

People go to the movies instead of moving. — Tennessee Williams

Sometimes - there's God - so quickly! — Tennessee Williams

I know all about the tyranny of women. — Tennessee Williams

Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm! — Tennessee Williams

'Suttree' is a fat one, a book with rude, startling power and a flood of talk. Much of it takes place on the Tennessee River, and Cormac McCarthy, who has written 'The Orchard Keeper' and other novels, gives us a sense of river life that reads like a doomed 'Huckleberry Finn.' — Jerome Charyn

I'm not good. I don't know why people have to pretend to be good, nobody's good. — Tennessee Williams

If you see me coming, better step aside. A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died. — Tennessee Ernie Ford

In America, Blackberry Farm in Tennessee is one of the most amazing hotels I've had the privilege of staying at. — Gail Simmons

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

I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself. — Tennessee Williams

I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie) — Tennessee Williams

Puttin' on a cowboy hat & a pair of boots doesn't make you country; Like puttin' on a ball gown & glass heels won't make me Cinderella. — Kellie Elmore