Quotes from Tennessee Williams

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.

When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working.

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

There is time for departure even when theres no certain place to go.

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

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

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

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others.

Liquor is one way out an' death's the other.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families.

I don't want realism. I want magic!

They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!

I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.

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

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

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you -- gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

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

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

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

Time is the longest distance between two places.

To be free is to have achieved your life.