Tennessee Williams Quotes

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

Time doesn't take away from true friendship, nor does separation.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

I talk out the lines as I write them.

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

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.

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

People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.

Men don't want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.

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

But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

To change is to live, to live is to change, and not to change is to die.

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

All good art is an indiscretion.

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

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.

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

I don't want realism. I'll tell you what 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 truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!

Mexico is the front door to South America - and the back door to the states.

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.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn't so funny.

They chatter together like birds on Cypress Hill, but all they say is 'Live, live, live, live, live!' It's all they've learned, it's the only advice they can give.

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!

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

I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.

They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!

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.

You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

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

I always said little Truman had a voice so high it could only be detected by bats.