Tennessee Williams Quotes

“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

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

“Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families.”

“I suppose 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.”

“We're all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”

“You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.”

“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?”

“I don't want realism. I want magic!”

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

“Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!”

“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!”

“Show me a person who hasn't known any sorrow and I'll show you a superficial.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.”

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

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”

“What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...”

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”

“Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation.”

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”

“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.”

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

“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”

“People go to the movies instead of moving.”

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

“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.”