Tennessee Williams was an American playwright who wrote many classic plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie. He was a major figure in American literature and is considered one of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century. His works often explored the themes of desire, death, and the human condition.
What is the most famous quote by Tennessee Williams ?
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
— Tennessee Williams
What can you learn from Tennessee Williams (Life Lessons)
- Tennessee Williams taught us to embrace our individuality and to never be ashamed of our unique perspectives and experiences.
- He also showed us the importance of being open and honest about our emotions and to never be afraid to express ourselves.
- Finally, he demonstrated the power of storytelling to bring people together and to create meaningful connections.
The most professional Tennessee Williams quotes that are little-known but priceless
Following is a list of the best Tennessee Williams quotes, including various Tennessee Williams inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Tennessee Williams.
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
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.
If I got rid of my demons, I'd lose my angels.
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.
.. Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.
I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.
Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
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.
Expressive quotes by Tennessee Williams
A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!
Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families
I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie)
Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
I don't want realism. I want magic!
Quotations by Tennessee Williams that are poetic and melancholic
Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.
You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.
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.
Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.
Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.
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.
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.
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
Kill off all my demons and my angels might die too.
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.
America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
To be free is to have achieved your life.
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die — with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.
Luck is believing you're lucky.
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
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!
All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.
Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.
I gave up visiting my psychoanalyst because he was meddling too much in my private life.
It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.
An artist must believe in himself - Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence - but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say - He is vain - but they are affected.
Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?
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.
Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.
The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.
Men don't want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.
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.