Tennessee Williams > Quotes

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
― Tennessee Williams, Conversations With Tennessee Williams

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”
― Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“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, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation.”
― Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

“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, A Streetcar Named Desire

“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

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”
― Tennessee Williams, Stairs to the Roof

“Don't you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour - but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands - and who knows what to do with it?”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“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.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

“When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”
― Tennessee Williams

“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“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

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.”
― Tennesse Williams, Camino Real

“Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“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, The Glass Menagerie

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”
― Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth

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

“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, A Streetcar Named Desire

“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.”
― Tennessee Williams

“I don't want realism. I want magic!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.

--Blanche Dubois”
― Tennessee Williams's, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire

“We're all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”
― 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, The Glass Menagerie