Williams Tennessee Quotes & Sayings

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

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! — Tennessee Williams

For there was a conspiracy of dullness in the world, a universal plan to shut out the resurgences of spirit which might interfere with clockwork. Better to keep your elevation unseen until it is higher than strangers' hands can reach to pull you down to their level. — Tennessee Williams

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged. — 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

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

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

I'm not really so hard & cynical after all - in fact I'm still dangerously soft. — Tennessee Williams

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

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

Of course you always had that detached quality as if you were playing a game without much concern over whether you won or lost, and now that you've lost the game, not lost but just quit playing, you have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or hopelessly sick people, the charm of the defeated. — Tennessee Williams

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

I am very indebted to southern writers and not just Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, Barry Hannah and William Gay. — Donald Ray Pollock

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

But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark
that sort of make everything else seem
unimportant. — 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

The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness. — 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

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

Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think. — Tennessee Williams

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. — Tennessee Williams

Is a lifetime long enough to hold the regret that I have for that fantastically aborted but crazily sweet love affair? — 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 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

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. — 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

Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair. — Mindy Kaling

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

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

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

Big Daddy: Ignorance - of mortality - is a comfort. — 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

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

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

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

I suppose 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. — Tennessee Williams

[The Writer silently passes her a pint bottle of whiskey.] Thank you, Mr.
?
WRITER: Chekhov! Anton Pavlovitch Chekhov!
MRS HARDWICKE-MOORE [smiling with the remnants of coquetry]: Thank you, Mr.
Chekhov. — 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

Savannah is a ... lovely pastel dream of tight cobbled streets ... There are legendary scenes ... to rival any dreamed up by Tennessee Williams. — Rosemary Daniell

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

We've had this date with each other from the beginning. — Tennessee Williams

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

It's like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there's peace. — Tennessee Williams

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

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

It's almost impossible for anybody to believe that they're not loved by someone they believe they love. But honey, I love nobody. — Tennessee Williams

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

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. — Tennessee Williams

Of coherency, I usually attempt it. — 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

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

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

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

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

I know all about the tyranny of women. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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