Quotes from Tennessee Williams

You see, baby, after a glass or two of wine I'm inclined to extravagance.

most writers, and most other artists, too, are primarily motivated in their desperate vocation by a desire to find and to separate truth from the complex of lies and evasions they live in, and I think that this impulse is what makes their work not so much a profession as a vocation, a true calling.

To you, whoever you are, when I am gone — remember to be kind tonight to some lonely person. For me.

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter.

And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into...

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

When I had that attack of pleurosis - he asked me what was the matter when I came back. I said pleurosis - he thought that I said Blue Roses! So that's what he always called me after that. Whenever he saw me, he'd holler, Hello, Blue Roses!

It's almost impossible for anybody to believe that they're not loved by someone they believe they love. But honey, I love nobody.

I've been accused of having a death wish but I think it's life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessly, on any terms whatsoever.

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

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

Take by surprise and the world gives up resistance.

I hope to die in my sleep, when the time comes, and I hope it will be in the beautiful big brass bed in my New Orleans apartment, the bed which is associated with so much love.

Most people's lives—what are they but trails of debris, each day more debris, more debris, long, long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but, finally, death.

Everything that is tearing us down today will become a memory, and this memory will be shared as an anecdote or a story or a poem or a play or a warning. It will be shared with another human being, who will then understand that he is not alone in his sadness. This is why we show up for others and tell our tales and listen to others. The great congregation meets daily, and you are someone's angel today. (In an Interview with James Grissom)

Chance, you've gone past something you couldn't afford to go past; your time, your youth, you've passed it. It's all you had and you've had it.

Margaret: Oh you weak people, you weak, beautiful people! - who give up. What you want is someone to [she turns out the rose-silk lamp] take hold of you. Gently, gently, with love! And I do love you, Brick, I do! Brick [smiling with charming sadness]: Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?

Since that day, when people have spoken to me of genius, I have felt the inside pocket to make sure my wallet's still there.

It's no tragedy, Freckles. Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

Security is a kind of death.

It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature

She laughs frequently and wildly and with a sort of precocious, tragic abandon.