Tennessee Williams Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• I’m a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry. It doesn’t have to be called a poem, you know.

  Tennessee Williams

  Drama, Play, Stories

  Tennessee Williams, David Ernest Roessel (2007). “The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• I don't ask for your pity, but just your understanding - no, not even that -no. Just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.

  Tennessee Williams

  Time, Understanding, Enemy

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Light, Kitchen, Stronger

  Tennessee Williams (2004). “A Streetcar Named Desire”, p.115, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

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

  Tennessee Williams

  Death, Animal, Giving

  Tennessee Williams (1991). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

  Tennessee Williams

  Loneliness, Writing, Night

  Tennessee Williams (1975). “Memoirs”, p.99, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that.

  Tennessee Williams

  Desire, Want, Loser

  Tennessee Williams (1993). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Love, Dream, People

  Tennessee Williams (1990). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.450, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion.

  Tennessee Williams

  Banner, Bohemia, Discretion

  Tennessee Williams (2008). “Camino Real”, p.49, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

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

  Tennessee Williams

  Doe, Honey, Coke

  Tennessee Williams (2004). “A Streetcar Named Desire”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Nobody knew my rose of the world but me... I had too much glory. They don't want glory like that in nobody's heart

  Tennessee Williams

  Heart, Rose, World

  Tennessee Williams, John Patrick Shanley (2010). “The Rose Tattoo”, p.65, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• When things don’t change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.

  Tennessee Williams

  Cubicles, Flesh, Don't Change

  Tennessee Williams (1994). “Collected Stories”, p.132, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

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

  Tennessee Williams

  Goodbye, Blow, Lightning

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• I met her last summer on a moonlight boat trip.

  Tennessee Williams

  Summer, Lasts, Boat

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tennessee Williams

  Artist, Creative, Age

  Tennessee Williams, John S. Bak (2009). “New Selected Essays: Where I Live”, p.112, New Directions Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Girl, Boys, Discovery

  Tennessee Williams (1953). “A Streetcar Named Desire: Play in Three Acts”, p.67, Dramatists Play Service Inc

  8 Copy quote

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

  Tennessee Williams

  Nature, Vacuums, Stuff

  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) act 2. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 403:27

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• I don't want realism. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!

  Tennessee Williams

  People, Giving, Magic

  "A Streetcar Named Desire".

  4 Copy quote

• A woman's charm is fifty percent illusion.

  Tennessee Williams

  Women, Fifty, Illusion

  Tennessee Williams (1947). “A streetcar named Desire”, Signet Book

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• Security is a kind of death.

  Tennessee Williams

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.104, New Directions Publishing

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• Nothing human disgusts me unless it's unkind.

  Tennessee Williams

  Humanity, Disgusting, Humans

  Tennessee Williams (1993). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.363, New Directions Publishing

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• Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

  Tennessee Williams

  Color, Revolution, Bright Colors

  Tennessee Williams (1994). “Collected Stories”, p.129, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• -You're simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to... -To lay her cards out on the table.

  Tennessee Williams

  Simple, Thinking, Sides

  4 Copy quote

• If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets.

  Tennessee Williams

  People, Way, Nations

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• Val: Why do you go out there? Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice. Val: What advice do they give? Sandra: Just one word- live!

  Tennessee Williams

  People, Giving, Advice

  Tennessee Williams (1990). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• I talk out the lines as I write them.

  Tennessee Williams

  Writing, Lines

  Tennessee Williams, David Ernest Roessel (2007). “The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

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