Tennessee Williams Quotes

162 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Tennessee Williams
He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded.

Tennessee Williams
What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew…Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can.

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

Tennessee Williams
Blanche: I don't want realism.
Mitch: Naw, I guess not.
Blanche: I'll tell you what I want. Magic!

Tennessee Williams
The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others.

Tennessee Williams
Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

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
I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I'm planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I've already made the right connections and all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam — Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money — Zzzzzp! — Power!

Tennessee Williams
Make voyages!—Attempt them!—there's nothing else...

Tennessee Williams
If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

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

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
For there was a conspiracy of dullness in the world, a universal plan to shut out the resurgences of spirit which might interfere with clockwork. Better to keep your elevation unseen until it is higher than strangers' hands can reach to pull you down to their level.

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

Tennessee Williams
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
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
And 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 Williams
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 and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own violation—and knowing these things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!

Tennessee Williams
You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!

Tennessee Williams
Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the on that you love doesn't love you.

Tennessee Williams
These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?

Tennessee Williams
Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

Tennessee Williams
Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.

Tennessee Williams
The 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 Williams
Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

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