Quotes from Tennessee Williams

I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

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

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.

I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you.

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.

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

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

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.

How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?

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

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

You have a spark of anarchy in your spirit and that's not to be tolerated. Nothing wild or honest is tolerated her! It has to be extinguished...

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Everybody is nothing until you love them.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.

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

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

Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the on that you love doesn't love you.

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

They chatter together like birds on Cypress Hill, but all they say is 'Live, live, live, live, live!' It's all they've learned, it's the only advice they can give.

I saw that it was all over, put away in a box like a doll no longer cared for, the magical intimacy of our childhood together