Tennessee Williams Quotes

"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."

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

"All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness."

"But now I have changed my mind, or the girl who said 'no' doesn't exist anymore. She died last summer, suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside of her. No, she doesn't live now, but she left me her topaz ring set in pearls...and she said to me when she slipped it on my finger, 'Remember I died empty handed, and so make sure your hands have something in them!' I said, 'But what about pride?' She said, 'Forget about pride when it stands between you and what you must have!' And then I said, 'But what if he doesn't want me?' I don't know what she said then, I think she stopped breathing."

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

"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with."

"For time is the longest distance between two places. "

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

"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action."

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

"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."

"If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it."

"In memory everything seems to happen to music."

"Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out and death's the other."

"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."

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

"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."

"Success and failure are equally disastrous."

"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."

"To be free is to have achieved your life."

"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."

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

"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."