William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.
Tennessee WilliamsHow long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?
Tennessee WilliamsThe future is called 'perhaps,' which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
Tennessee WilliamsI think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you.
Tennessee WilliamsPhysical 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 WilliamsTime goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.
Tennessee WilliamsI 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 WilliamsThe theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.
Tennessee WilliamsAnd 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 WilliamsIf I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people and with violent material. I don't regret having concerned myself with such people, because I think that most of us are disturbed.
Tennessee WilliamsSince 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 WilliamsBut since I have a poet's weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.
Tennessee WilliamsWe'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 WilliamsAn artist must believe in himself - Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence - but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say - He is vain - but they are affected.
Tennessee WilliamsWhen 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 WilliamsBut there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark -- that sort of make everything else seem -- unimportant.
Tennessee WilliamsA vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee WilliamsThere 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 WilliamsWhy, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!
Tennessee WilliamsDon't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
Tennessee WilliamsHysteria 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 WilliamsPersonal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.
Tennessee WilliamsWe are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.
Tennessee WilliamsThe 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 WilliamsPerhaps the most vivid recollection of my youth is that of the local wheelmen, led by my father, stopping at our home to eat pone, sip mint juleps, and flog the field hands. This more than anything cultivated my life-long aversion to bicycles.
Tennessee WilliamsLife is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
Tennessee WilliamsFor a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.
Tennessee WilliamsSwitch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!
Tennessee WilliamsThe process by which the idea for a play comes to me has always been something I really couldn't pinpoint. A play just seems to materialize; like an apparition, it gets clearer and clearer and clearer. It's very vague at first, as in the case of Streetcar, which came after Menagerie. I simply had the vision of a woman in her late youth. She was sitting in a chair all alone by a window with the moonlight streaming in on her desolate face, and she'd been stood up by the man she planned to marry.
Tennessee Williams