34 Quotes by Tennessee Williams
- Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.
- Time is the longest distance between two places.
- The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
- The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!
- The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.
- In memory everything seems to happen to music.
- All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of 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.
- When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.
- Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
- 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.
- You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.
- When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
- Success and failure are equally disastrous.
- Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.
- Luck is believing you're lucky.
- Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
- A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
- All good art is an indiscretion.
- All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
- All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
- Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
- There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
- For time is the longest distance between two places.
- Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
- 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.
- 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.
- I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
- 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.
- If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
- I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
- 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'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.
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