xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“And the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and—swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh.”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Mrs. Venable, Scene One
Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

“Eternity!—Didn't it give you the cold shivers?”

Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke

Alma, Prologue
Summer and Smoke (1948)

“Things have a way of turning out so badly.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

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

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Actually by the Chinese philosopher, educator and popular lecturer Dr. Tehyi Hsieh, Chinese epigrams inside out, and proverbs, 1948.
Misattributed
Variant: Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

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

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

No known citation to Williams. Attributed in Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations), 2005, MP Singh, Lotus Press.
The full quote is captured in a letter Tennessee wrote to Donald Windham and can be found on pages 57 and 58 of Tennessee WIlliams' Letters to Donald Windham. The quote is not misattributed.
Misattributed

“Well, now I've said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I've seen Him!—and he meant God...”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Mrs. Venable, Scene One
Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

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

Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth

Sweet Bird of Youth, Act 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=5eqagR0rbboC&q=%22I+don't+ask+for+your+pity+but+just+for+your+understanding+not+even+that+no+Just+for+your+recognition+of+me+in+you+and+the+enemy+time+in+us+all%22&pg=PA96#v=onepage (1959)

“I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: "Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there," it says, "and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place…”

Tennessee Williams Camino Real

Sancho
Camino Real (1953)

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

After meeting Anna Magnani, as quoted in Tennessee Williams : Rebellious Puritan (1961) by Nancy Marie Patterson Tischler, p. 175