Tennessee Williams Quotes (84 Quotes)

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.

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.

They told me to take a streetcar named desire and then transfer to on called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian fields!

You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it.

Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!

All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.

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

But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.

For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .

Go then! Then go to the moon - you selfish dreamer!

Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!

How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

I know all about the tyranny of women.

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?

Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.

I don't want realism. I want magic!

People go to the movies instead of moving.

I have always depended on the kidness of strangers.

The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

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!

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.

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

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

This country of endured but unendurable pain.

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

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

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?

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.

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

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.

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

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth

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.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Make voyages Attempt them ... there's nothing else.

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.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

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

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.

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.

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

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.