Tennessee Quotes

Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think. ~ Tennessee Williams

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable. ~ Tennessee Williams

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men. ~ Stephen Ambrose

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

Girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man. ~ Tennessee Williams

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

Tennessee Williams once wrote, 'We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.' Yes, but oh! What a view from that upstairs window! What Tennessee failed to mention was that if we look out of that window with an itchy curiousity and a passionate eye; with a generous spirit and a capacity for delight; and yes, the language with which to support and enrich the thing we see, then it DOESN'T MATTER that the house is burning down around us. It doesn't matter. Let the motherfucker blaze! ~ Tom Robbins

Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones! ~ Tennessee Williams

We had three cows and a goat. People from New York and L.A. are like, 'Oh my gosh, that's a farm!' But people in Tennessee are like, 'That's not a farm.' I've never milked a cow or anything like that. ~ Kelsea Ballerini

Oh you kissed the soul of a rebel
In a Yankee girl
You got to me
I heard you callin' 'round the world
From your back roads
Tennessee ~ Shawn Colvin

The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty. ~ Tennessee Williams

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities'- New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. ~ Frank Norris

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

And in the spring, it's touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before! ~ Tennessee Williams

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

I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee, and we had 'The Mountain Opry,' where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy. ~ Rachel Boston

I do a lot of American plays. I've done a lot of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon. I was in 'Sisters Rosensweig,' 'Six Degrees of Separation,' all of that stuff. So we're very familiar with America. I did 400 performances of 'Born Yesterday.' I did 700 performances of 'They're Playing Our Song.' ~ Jacki Weaver

I want to rest. I want to breathe quietly again. ~ Tennessee Williams

He always entered the house as though he were entering it with the intention of tearing it down from inside ~ Tennessee Williams

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

One man has one great true thing in his life. One great good thing that is true! ~ Tennessee Williams

...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

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

Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people? ~ Tennessee Williams

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

My biggest extravagances are also investments. I have several houses in California, a house in Nashville, an office complex, and I bought the old home place in Tennessee. They are different places for me to write, but I can turn right around and sell them. ~ Dolly Parton

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

He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distance. ~ Tennessee Williams

{Excerpt from a message from one of the Cherokee chiefs - Onitositaii, commonly known as Old Tassle}

... 'If, therefore, a bare march, or reconnoitering a country is sufficient reason to ground a claim to it, we shall insist upon transposing the demand, and your relinquishing your settlements on the western waters and removing one hundred miles back towards the east, whither some of our warriors advanced against you in the course of last year's campaign.

Let us examine the facts of your present eruption into our country, and we shall discover your pretentions on that ground. What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force; our vigilance gave us no timely notice of your manouvres [sic]; your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods, there to secure our women and children.

Thus, you marched into our towns; they were left to your mercy; you killed a few scattered and defenseless individuals, spread fire and desolation wherever you pleased, and returned again to your own habitations. If you meant this, indeed, as a conquest you omitted the most essential point; you should have fortified the junction of the Holstein and Tennessee rivers, and have thereby conquered all the waters above you. But, as all are fair advantages during the existence of a state of war, it is now too late for us to suffer for your mishap of generalship!

Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority ~ John Ehle

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

-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

A Prayer for The Wild at Heart

A prayer for the wild at heart
Kept in cages
I know how you long
To run wild and free
To feel your blood pumping
To hear your heart beating faster
Yet you can't
For you are locked inside a prison
One that you will never escape
I can hear your howls of pain
And your growls of frustration
Pacing back and forth
Clawing at the bars
Tearing at your skin
Begging to be set free
Your eyes are wild of full hate
You face bears no smile
Only a snarl of anger

Blood drips from your hands
Blood from the people
Who didn't understand
Your fearful whimpers fill the air
As you look to the full moon
And let out a mournful howl
Your voice gets louder
As I and the others join in
We let our pleads fill the night
As we sit in our cold cages
Praying someone will hear

- Tennessee Williams ~ Tennessee Williams

There's a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go. ~ Tennessee Williams

When I had that attack of pleurosis - he asked me what was the matter when I came back. I said pleurosis - he thought that I said Blue Roses! So that's what he always called me after that. Whenever he saw me, he'd holler, Hello, Blue Roses! ~ Tennessee Williams

...when President Clinton, on the anniversary of his election, spoke in the church in Tennessee where Martin Luther King, Jr., had delivered his last sermon. Inspired by the place and the occasion, he made one of the most eloquent speeches of his presidency. What would King have said, he asked, had he lived to see this day?

"He would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. This is not what I came here to do.

I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon; not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don't amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work, but not have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for."

After describing what his administration was doing to curb drugs and violence, the President concluded that the government alone could not do the job. The problem was caused by "the breakdown of the family, the community and the disappearance of jobs," and unless we "reach deep inside to the values, the spirit, the soul and the truth of human nature, none of the ~ Gertrude Himmelfarb

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

All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur. ~ Tennessee Williams

There's no better credit card in the world than driving up at a bank door in a Cadillac limousine. ~ Tennessee Williams

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story , you, upon hearing the words 'soccer' and 'neighbor' in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say, not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories. ~ Garth Stein

I definitely used to lie about my age. I'm from Tennessee and everyone would vacation in Destin, Florida, where there are lots of cute guys. I would go with my older sister and lie about my age to them. ~ Lucy Hale

Everybody is nothing until you love them. ~ Tennessee Williams

The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small. ~ H.L. Mencken

When I was a teenager, I continued to visit imaginary places by spending all my free time at our local community theater. Whether I acted in a play or worked backstage, the world of Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare always seemed more real to me than the dreary life of high school. ~ Mary Pope Osborne

The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around ... But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.' ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent - fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience. ~ Tennessee Williams

I don't mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don't regard a home as a ... well, as a place, a building ... a house ... of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can ... well, nest. ~ Tennessee Williams

CORNELIA: -Sit down. Don't leave the table.
GRACE: -Is that an order?
CORNELIA: -I don't give orders to you, I make requests.
GRACE: -Sometimes the requests of an employer are hard to distinguish from orders. [She sits down] ~ Tennessee Williams

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

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

It is a terrible thing for an old woman to outlive her dogs. ~ 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

I have a poet's weakness for symbols. ~ Tennessee Williams

Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag. ~ Tennessee Williams

Alabama - they were the masters of that. They could come out with 'Mountain Music' or 'Tennessee River' and then turn around and come out with 'Feels So Right.' Go out and have fun and be those guys that like to party, then turn around and make every woman in America want Randy Owen. ~ Jason Aldean

I'm not really so hard & cynical after all - in fact I'm still dangerously soft. ~ 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 tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers! ~ Tennessee Ernie Ford

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

Chance, you've gone past something you couldn't afford to go past; your time, your youth, you've passed it. It's all you had and you've had it. ~ Tennessee Williams

There is only one true aristocracy ... and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls! ~ Tennessee Williams

I am running away but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat. ~ Tennessee Williams

I'd never blame anyone else who falls for the same brand of seduction. I embrace that we're all similarly flawed. That makes the self-inflicted wounds hurt less. I'd read Tennessee Williams. I just didn't expect to be living my own tainted little version of Suddenly Last Summer. ~ Dan Skinner

Where the Tennessee River, like a silver snake, winds her way through the clay hills of Alabama, sits high on these hills, my home town, Florence. ~ William Christopher Handy

The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee. ~ Flannery O'Connor

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

The greatest thing the Democrats have ever done for me was to defeat me for the governor of Tennessee. ~ Roy Acuff

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. ~ Tennessee Ernie Ford

I grew up hiking and horseback riding in Tennessee, so I love being outside. I will joyfully run 12 miles, but I'm not very good at boot camps. When they start yelling, I start laughing. ~ Rachel Boston

It was Gavin's turn to look perplexed. "You're from Tennessee?"
"Of course she's from Tennessee," Nick said."Why do you think we always make fun of her accent?"
Gavin shrugged. "Because it's there? ~ Jennifer Echols

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

(There is always another country and always another place.
There is always another name and another face.
And the name and the face are you, and you
The name and the face, and the stream you gaze into
Will show the adoring face, show the lips that lift to you
As you lean with the implacable thirst of self,
As you lean to the image which is yourself,
To set the lip to lip, fix eye on bulging eye,
To drink not of the stream but of your deep identity,
But water is water and it flows,
Under the image on the water the water coils and goes
And its own beginning and its end only the water knows.

There are many countries and the rivers in them
-Cumberland, Tennessee, Ohio, Colorado, Pecos, Little Big Horn,
And Roll, Missouri, roll.
But there is only water in them.

And in the new country and in the new, place
The eyes of the new friend will reflect the new face
And his mouth will speak to frame
The syllables of the new name
And the name is you and is the agitation of the air
And is the wind and the wind runs and the wind is everywhere.

The name and the face are you.
And they are you.
Are new.

For they have been dipped in the healing flood.
For they have been dipped in the redeeming blood.
For they have been dipped in Time
And Time is only beginnings
Time is only and always beginnings
And is the redemption of our c ~ Robert Penn Warren

I grew up in Tennessee where you either play football or you don't do anything at all. So I was a bit of loner, being interested in music. ~ Justin Timberlake

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

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can. ~ 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

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

He talking Louisiana, you speaking Tennessee. The music so different, the sound coming from a different part of the body. It must of been like hearing lyrics set to scores by two different composers. But when you made love he must of have said I love you and you understood that and it was true, too, because I have seen the desperation in his eyes ever since - no matter what business venture he thinks up. ~ Toni Morrison

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

We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano. ~ Tennessee Ernie Ford

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

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

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

I always sang when I was little-bitty girl. I sang all the time. And then I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I sang in a show at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You know, they have all those variety shows where Dollywood is. And I sang there and yodeled and clogged, but I never wrote my own songs. ~ Ashley Monroe

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

I love Tennessee Williams pieces; they are so poetic and I love period pieces. ~ Richard Hatch

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

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

I'm a veteran. If I go into the V.A. hospital in Tennessee, I want to know that the procedures they're doing to me are being done properly. That is not unreasonable. ~ Phil Roe

Watching the news inspires me to keep going and reminds me why I should never complain. I'm inspired by those who don't let others define them: Martin Luther King Jr., James Dean, Vincent Van Gogh, Hillary Clinton, Tennessee Williams, director Steve McQueen. They've all changed the conversation by making their voices heard. ~ Robert Piper

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. ~ Tennessee Williams

The only difference is that Dee's natural coloring looks like an American landscape - country-sky-blue eyes and hair the color of Tennessee wheat fields, golden strands with darker undertones. My hair is nearly black, and I have jealous green eyes. In a fairy tale, she'd play the good fairy. I'd be the evil witch's screwup second cousin. Dee ~ Emery Lord

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option. ~ Anonymous

When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O'Neill, Tennessee and me? ~ Mae West

Mercy, look what Ethan found, your Tennessee Collector's spoon. I told you I didn't take it!" Aunt Prue hollered.
"Let me see that." Mercy put her glasses on to inspect the spoon. "Well, I'll be. I finally have all eleven states."
"There are more than eleven states, Aunt Mercy."
"I only collect the states a the Confed'racy." Aunt Grace and Aunt Prue nodded in agreement. ~ Kami Garcia

If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets. ~ Tennessee Williams

In Tennessee I Found a Firefly"

Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light -

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember
the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them
central in my mind where everything else must
surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.
There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.
When I am tired of only touching,
I have my mouth to try to tell you
what, in your arms, is not erased. ~ Mary Szybist

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

PARNELL AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, TENNESSEE ~ Max Brooks

I will read long books and the journals of dead writers. I will feel closer to them than I ever felt to people I used to know before I withdrew from the world. It will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets, for I won't have to touch them or answer their questions. They will talk to me and not expect me to answer. And I'll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. I'll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain. ~ Tennessee Williams

I grew up in Florida in different cities. I was born in Mississippi. My parents moved a lot, so I moved to Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, all through the South. But my family's roots were from central Florida, like Daytona Beach area, so we ended up moving there. ~ Diplo