Quotes by Tennessee Williams

Youll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!

I go to the movies because – I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until theres a war. Thats when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyones dish, not only Gables! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — Its our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But Im not patient. I dont want to wait till then. Im tired of the movies and I am about to move!

I dont ask for your pity, but just for your understanding – not even that – no. Just for some recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.

The human animal is a beast that dies and if hes got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting!--Which it never can be....

When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

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.

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence dont work, its just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesnt put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent

He acts like an animal, has an animals habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! Theres even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures Ive seen in - anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you - you here - waiting for him! Maybe hell strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! - you call it - this party of apes! Somebody growls - some creature snatches at something - the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from beng made in Gods image, but Stella - my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art - as poetry and music - such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is were approaching . . . Dont - dont hang back with the brutes!

I dont mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I dont regard a home as a...well, as a place, a building...a house...of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can...well, nest.

Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered. Face it – pitiful monster.

...love, all at once and much, much too completely. Its like you suddenly turn a blinding light on something that had always been half a shadow...

CORNELIA: -Sit down. Dont leave the table.GRACE: -Is that an order?CORNELIA: -I dont give orders to you, I make requests.GRACE: -Sometimes the requests of an employer are hard to distinguish from orders. [She sits down]

The panic disappeared under those soothing old fingers and the breathing slowed down and stopped hurting the chest as if a fox was caught in it, and then at last Mr. Kroger began to lecture the boy as he used to, Pablo, he murmured, dont ever be so afraid of being lonely that you forget to be careful. Dont forget that you will find it sometimes but other times you wont be lucky, and those are the times when you have got to be patient, since patience is what you must have when you dont have luck. (The Mysteries of the Joy Rio)

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...

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.

These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in