Quotes from Tennessee Williams

The trouble is that I am being bullied and intimidated by my own success and the fame that surrounds it and what people expect of me and their demands on me. They are forcing me out of my natural position as an artist so that I am in peril of ceasing to be an artist at all. When that happens I will be nothing because I cannot be a professional writer.

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.

Ignorance - of mortality - is a comfort. A man don't have that comfort, he's the only living thing that conceives of death, that knows what it is.

I wanted death after that, but death don't come when you want it, it comes when you don't want it.

Oh, I suppose I am sick, one of those weak and divided people who slip like shadows among you solid strong ones. But sometimes, out of necessity, we shadowy people take on a strength of our own.

The carrion birds have tried to peck out my eyes and my tongue and my mind, but they've never been able to get at my heart.

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)

He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! [...] 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 in the spring, it's touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before!

Sometimes we sleep too long in the afternoon and when we wake we find things changed, Signora.

Porque el tiempo es la distancia más larga entre dos lugares...

Oh, no se puede describir al que se ama

I'm still in there fighting—for me! For life! For life is me!

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 !

I knew before asking the gypsy that something of this sort would happen to you. You have a spark of anarchy in your spirit and that's not to be tolerated. Nothing wild or honest is tolerated here! It has to be extinguished or used only to light up your nose for Mr. Gutman's amusement.

You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it. Isn't that right? Never had any anxiety about it, did it naturally, easily, slowly, with absolute confidence and perfect calm, more like opening a door for a lady or seating her at a table than giving expression to any longing for her. Your indifference made you wonderful at lovemaking - strange? - but true...

To be not alone, even for a few moments, is worth the pain and the danger.

I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft--soft people have got to shimmer and glow--they've got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a-- paper lantern over the light.... It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive. And I--I'm fading now! I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick.

Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you've got to keep on going.

But I think people always die alone... with or without relations.

The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: Hello - Goodbye! and no address.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn't so funny.

I cannot imagine any witch of a woman casting a spell over you.

What's yuh firs' name? VICARRO: Silva. JAKE: How do you spell it? VICARRO: S-I-L-V-A. JAKE: Silva! Like a silver lining! Ev'ry cloud has got a silver lining. What does that come from? The Bible? VICARRO: (sitting on the steps) No. The Mother Goose Book.