“Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023“And funerals are pretty compared to deaths.”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
“Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!”
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Source: The Glass Menagerie
“I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie)”
Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Variant: Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.
Source: The Glass Menagerie
“I don't want realism. I want magic!”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
“Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.
--Blanche Dubois”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Source: Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire
“You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)
“Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.”
Tennessee Williams Camino Real
Source: Camino Real
“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
“Why you're not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even!”
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Amanda, Scene Two
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Context: Why you're not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it — develop charm — and vivacity — and — charm!
“I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Program notes for a Pasadena Playhouse production of Stairs to the Roof (1947)
Context: When I look back at Stairs to the Roof... I see its faults very plainly, as plainly as you may see them, but still I do not feel apologetic about this play. Unskilled and awkward as I was at this initial period of my playwriting, I certainly had a moral earnestness which I cannot boast of today, and I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times. I wish I still had the idealistic passion of Benjamin Murphy! You may smile as I do at the sometimes sophomoric aspect of his excitement, but I hope you will respect, as I do, the purity of his feeling and the honest concern which he had in his heart for the basic problem of mankind, which is to dignify our lives with a certain freedom.
“Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
Tennessee Williams Camino Real
Camino Real (1953)
Context: You said, "They're harmless dreamers and they're loved by the people." — "What," I asked you, "is harmless about a dreamer, and what," I asked you, "is harmless about the love of the people? — Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams."