Tennessee Williams Quotes

162 Sourced Quotes

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

Tennessee Williams
There is a time for departure, even when there is no certain place to go.

Tennessee Williams
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going.

Tennessee Williams
Whoever you are — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

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

Tennessee Williams
In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Tennessee Williams
I didn't go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places.

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

Tennessee Williams
Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an' death's the other.

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

Tennessee Williams
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.

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

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
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.

Tennessee Williams
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
Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money—Zzzzzp! — Power! That's the cycle democracy is built on!

Tennessee Williams
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

Tennessee Williams
Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than--broken down.

Tennessee Williams
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
I don't believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

Tennessee Williams
You've got many refinements. I don't think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with...

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
To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.

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