Quotes by Tennessee Williams

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

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.

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

Unattached and aimless, these old men are always infatuated with little certainties and regularities such as those that ordered the life of Mr. Krupper as seen from outside. Habit is living. Anything unexpected reminds them of death.(Hard Candy)

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to ones office for a job.

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

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter.

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

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.

Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama.

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

We have to distrust each other. Its our only defense against betrayal.

Whats talent but the ability to get away with something?

This was a respect in which he paid due homage to the wise old spirit of the late Emiel Kroger, that romantically practical Teuton who used to murmur to Pablo, between sleeping and waking, a sort of incantation that went like his: Sometimes you will find it and other times you wont find it and the times you dont find it are the times when you have got to be careful. Those are the times when you have got to remember that other times you will find it, not this time but the next time, or the time after that, and then youve got to be able to go home without it, yes, those times are the times when you have got to be able to go home without it, go home alone without it...

I dont believe in original sin. I dont believe in guilt. I dont believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents. This is so simple Im ashamed to say it, but Im sure its true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And thats why I dont understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.

He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity.

Luck is believing your lucky.

It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature

...the human animal is a selfish beast...

In human character, simplicity doesnt exist except among simpletons.