Tennessee Williams

“A single watch or clock can be a powerful influence on a man, but when a man lives among as many watches and clocks as crowded the tiny, dim shop of Mr Gonzales, some lagging behind, some skipping ahead, but all ticking monotonously on in their witless fashion, the multitude of them may be likely to deprive them of importance, as a gem loses its value when there are too many just like it which are too easily or cheaply obtainable.”

“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.”

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”

“The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.”

“All good art is an indiscretion.”

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

“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.”

“To be free is to have achieved your life.”

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

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

“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

“We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.”

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

“All good art is an indiscretion.”

“To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.”

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

“I don't 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 he's 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....”

“Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.”

“I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.”

“Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.”

“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 one's office for a job.”

“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”

“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.”

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

“A Prayer for the Wild at Heart That Are Kept in Cages”

“In memory everything seems to happen to music.”

“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.”

“Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down… So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!”

“Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum!”

“I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South — barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife! — stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room — encouraged by one in-law to visit another — little birdlike women without any nest — eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves?”

“Why you're not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it — develop charm — and vivacity — and — charm!”

“I took that horrible novel back to the library — yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them — BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!”

“Every time you come in yelling that God damn "Rise and Shine!" "Rise and Shine!" I say to myself, "How lucky dead people are!"”

“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!”

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!”

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

“I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I'm planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I've already made the right connections and all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam — Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money — Zzzzzp! — Power!”

“I'll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less — freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns…”

“I wish you were my sister. I'd teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They're common as — weeds, but — you — well, you're — Blue Roses!”

“Things have a way of turning out so badly.”

“You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!”

“Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out! — for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…”

“Eternity!—Didn't it give you the cold shivers?”

“The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You've come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!”

“When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”

“You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!”

“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!”

“When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”

“I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: "Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there," it says, "and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place...”

“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."”

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

“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.”

“We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn't written about.”

“And the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and—swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh.”

“Well, now I've said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I've seen Him!—and he meant God . . .”

“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.”

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