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Home
Authors
Tennessee Williams
American
Dramatist
About the author
Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Death
#Liquor
Time is the longest distance between two places.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Time
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Mountains
#Violets
The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Time
#Life
#Love
#Work
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Word
#Brother
#Tongue
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Music
#Memory
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Present
#Memory
Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Dignity
#Question
#Importance
Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Friends
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Frankness
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.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Success
#Luxury
#Danger
#Artist
When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Day
#Writing
#Rest
Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Confidence
#Wine
Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Love
#People
#Grace
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,
American
Dramatist
#Future
Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Struggle
#Salvation
You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Old
#Money
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Lonely
Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Character
#Life
#Play
#Mystery
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Success
#Failure
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Success
#Planning
Luck is believing you're lucky.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Luck
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Hell
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Hell
#Nature
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Grace
#Gallantry
All good art is an indiscretion.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Art
#Indiscretion
All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#God
#Work
#Progress
#Humanity
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#God
#Mythology
Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Death
Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Day
#Suffering
Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#Enthusiasm
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Time
#Departure
For time is the longest distance between two places.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Time
Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Time
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,
American
Dramatist
#Heart
#Mountains
#Road
I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Work
#Success
#Play
#Failure
#Night
#Negative
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Strangers
#Kindness
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,
American
Dramatist
#Life
#People
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,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Will
#Regret
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Man
#Writing
To be free is to have achieved your life.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Action
#Light
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,
American
Dramatist
#Fire
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Life
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#God
#Work
#Progress
#Humanity
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams,
American
Dramatist
#Defense
#Betrayal
#Distrust