Tennessee Williams Quotes

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Stanley:
Delicate piece she is.
Stella:
She is. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Stanley:<br />Delicate piece she is.<br
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 Quotes: It is, perhaps more than
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 Quotes: The different people are not
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 Quotes: There is no pleasure in
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 Quotes: The world is violent and
Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light ...
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Openings come quickly, sometimes, like
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 Quotes: There comes a time when
-You're simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to ... -To lay her cards out on the table.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: -You're simple, straightforward and honest,
The helpless can't help the helpless.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The helpless can't help the
He is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: He is the long-delayed but
Nature is not on the side of a girl over thirty
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Nature is not on the
Nothing's more determined than a cat on a hot tin roof ...
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Nothing's more determined than a
Q.Do you have any positive message, in your opinion?
A.Indeed I do think that I do.
Q.Such as what?
A.The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have involuntarily chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Q.Do you have any positive
All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: All creative work, all life
The Jefferson is such a dignified hotel / There is no such thing.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The Jefferson is such a
The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The cities swept about me
...most writers, and most other artists, too, are primarily motivated in their desperate vocation by a desire to find and to separate truth from the complex of lies and evasions they live in, and I think that this impulse is what makes their work not so much a profession as a vocation, a true calling.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: ...most writers, and most other
Is a lifetime long enough to hold the regret that I have for that fantastically aborted but crazily sweet love affair?
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Is a lifetime long enough
I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife! stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room encouraged by one in-law to visit another little birdlike women without any nest eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves?
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I know so well what
Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Maggie, we're through with lies
Don't you understand? I was PROCURING for him.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Don't you understand? I was
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 Quotes: Since that day, when people
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 Quotes: We are all of us
The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The only unforgivable sin is
There is only one true aristocracy ... and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: There is only one true
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 Quotes: The great and only possible
Kenneth Hari does not paint portraits as they are but as he is. I feel he is hiding something from me. To board a train into his mind would give me a ride into dark adventure.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Kenneth Hari does not paint
Luck is believing you're lucky.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Luck is believing you're lucky.
People go to the movies instead of moving.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: People go to the movies
I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I don't believe anyone ever
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 Quotes: The low-tone clarinet moans. The
The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The Venus flytrap, a devouring
Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Symbols are nothing but the
Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Time doesn't take away from
He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distance.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: He was a telephone man
You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!
and death was the only icebox where you could keep it ...
Tennessee Williams Quotes: You two had something that
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 Quotes: But there are things that
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 Quotes: These are the intensities that
And in this city a man will go mad with paresis, another with terror, a third will drown himself and the newspapers will report death from cancer and cerebral hemorrhage among our leading citizens, and there will casual mention of various epidemics, of lust murders, of famine and starvation, and the decline of Utilities on the New York Exchange. But all that's forgotten tonight, God's asleep. And if you have any questions to ask about the chaotic conditions on this little spherical toy of his, you'll have to refer them to his secretary, who will send you form letter No. X99 explaining that accidents will happen and that of course God's ways are necessarily rather obscure to man.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: And in this city a
The carrion birds have tried to peck out my eyes and my tongue and my mind, but they've never been able to get at my heart.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The carrion birds have tried
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: If the writing is honest
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 Quotes: Val: Why do you go
It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature
Tennessee Williams Quotes: It would be one of
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 Quotes: My head don't work any
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 Quotes: Margaret: Oh you weak people,
If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: If I am no longer
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Success and failure are equally
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 Quotes: Hysteria is a natural phenomenon,
I have a poet's weakness for symbols.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I have a poet's weakness
I have been corrupted as much as anyone else by the vast number of menial services which our society has grown to expect and depend on. We should do for ourselves or let the machines do for us, the glorious technology that is supposed to be the new light of the world. We are like a man who has bought a great amount of equipment for a camping trip, who has the canoe and the tent and the fishing lines and the axe and the guns, the mackinaw and the blankets, but who now, when all the preparations and the provisions are piled expertly together, is suddenly too timid to set out on the journey but remains where he was yesterday and the day before and the day before that, looking suspiciously through the white lace curtains at the clear sky he distrusts. Our great technology is a God-given chance for adventure and for progress which we are afraid to attempt. Our ideas and our ideals remain exactly what they were and where they were three centuries ago. No. I beg your pardon. It is no longer safe for a man to even declare them!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I have been corrupted as
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 Quotes: When I write I don't
No, truth is something desperate, an' she's got it. Believe me, it's something desperate, an' she's got it.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: No, truth is something desperate,
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 Quotes: I'm a poet. And then
Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Being disappointed is one thing
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 Quotes: I believe the way to
Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Well, honey, a shot never
I always said little Truman had a voice so high it could only be detected by bats.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I always said little Truman
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: A high station in life
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 Quotes: Yes, I have tricks in
The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn't so funny.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: The world is a funny
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 Quotes: And then the searchlight which
What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: What is straight? A line
A fire smokes the most when you start pouring water on it.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: A fire smokes the most
We've had this date with each other from the beginning.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: We've had this date with
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 Quotes: The scene is memory and
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Why did I write? Because
A beautiful trust. A rare and beautiful trust. It makes me cry a little. That's all that life has to give in the way of perfection. The warm and complete understanding of two in a close-walled room with the windows blind to the world.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: A beautiful trust. A rare
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 Quotes: The apartment faces an alley
Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Sorrow makes for sincerity, I
I'll be all right in a minute, I'm just bewildered - by life ...
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I'll be all right in
Miss Collins: That's the picture, the one in the silver frame up there on the mantle. We cooled the watermelon in the springs and afterwards played games. She hid somewhere and he took ages to find her. It got to be dark and he hadn't found her yet and everyone whispered and giggled about it and finally they came back together- her hangin' on to his arm like a common little strumpet- and Daisy Belle Huston shrieked out, "Look, everyboy, the seat of Evelyn's skirt!" It was-covered with-grass stains! Did you ever hear of anything outrageous?
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Miss Collins: That's the picture,
You were a wonderful lover.... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: You were a wonderful lover....
We're left alone with each other. We have to creep close to each other and give gentle little nudges with our paws and our muzzles before we can slip into sleep and rest for the next day's playtime.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: We're left alone with each
I don't want realism. I want magic!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: I don't want realism. I
In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: In human character, simplicity doesn't
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 Quotes: You know, then that the
We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: We are all civilized people,
Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Death is one moment, and
[Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.]
Tennessee Williams Quotes: [Her delicate beauty must avoid
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 Quotes: I'm much more conscious of
He would die early, since nothing so fair could decline by common degrees in a faded season.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: He would die early, since
My '60s plays were as good as most of the other plays I've written ... except I wasn't in a condition to refine them, to help in the rehearsal, or do anything. I was hardly conscious of what was going on except during the hours of the day when I was actually writing ... and that was with the aid of speed.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: My '60s plays were as
Stella:
And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby..
[she smiles to herself]
Blanche:
I guess that is what is meant by being in love..
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Stella:<br>And when he comes back
There are no "good" or "bad" people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: There are no
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 Quotes: Personal lyricism is the outcry
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 Quotes: The strongest influences in my
Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Don't you think there is
It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: It's hard enough for me
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 Quotes: I think no more than
It is a terrible thing for an old woman to outlive her dogs.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: It is a terrible thing
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 Quotes: Jim lights a cigarette and
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 Quotes: I know I fib a
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 Quotes: Life is important. There is
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 Quotes: I don't believe in
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 Quotes: Keep awake, alive, new. Perform
This play is dedicated to the memory of Clarence Darrow, The Great Defender, whose mental frontiers were the four corners of the sky.
Tennessee Williams Quotes: This play is dedicated to
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent
Tennessee Williams Quotes: All your Western theologies, the
You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream, you manufacture illusions!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: You don't know things anywhere!
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 Quotes: Nobody sees anybody truly but
Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!
Tennessee Williams Quotes: Go, then! Go to the
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