Quotes from Tennessee Williams

Talent? What is talent but the ability to get away with something?

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

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

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

I don't want realism…. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic!… I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth.

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

Knowledge—Zzzzzp! Money—Zzzzzp!—Power! That's the cycle democracy is built on!

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

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.... Success is shy — it won't come out while you're watching.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an' death's the other.

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

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

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.

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

Nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof—is there? Is there, baby?

All good art is an indiscretion.

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

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

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.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

For time is the longest distance between two places.