Tennessee Williams: Trending quotes

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

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”

Tennessee Williams

Source: Conversations with Tennessee Williams

Positive , Angels

“Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Forgiveness

“Security is a kind of death.”

Tennessee Williams

Death

“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!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!
Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Family

“Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…
Tom, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Faith , Drink

“I wish you were my sister. I'd teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They're common as — weeds, but — you — well, you're — Blue Roses!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

People , Confidence , Sister , Time

“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”

Tennessee Williams The Rose Tattoo

The Timeless World of Play http://books.google.com/books?id=Rp3TJUCT9soC&q=%22Snatching+the+eternal+out+of+the+desperately+fleeting+is+the+great+magic+trick+of+human+existence%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage, an introductory essay to The Rose Tattoo (1951)

“I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I'm planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I've already made the right connections and all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam — Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money — Zzzzzp!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Power!
Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Money , Way , Knowledge , Future

“I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South — barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife! — stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room — encouraged by one in-law to visit another — little birdlike women without any nest — eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves?”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Two
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Life , Women , Law , Sister

“The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arm still thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last. I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly very depressed.”

Tennessee Williams book The Catastrophe of Success

page 15
The Catastrophe of Success (1945)

Life , Success

“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!”

Tennessee Williams The Rose Tattoo

Rosa, Act Three, Scene Three
The Rose Tattoo (1951)

“Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Laura, Scene Two
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Disappointment , Suffering

“You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!”

Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke

Alma, Scene Twelve
Summer and Smoke (1948)

God , Thinking

“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, Scene Four
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Lovers

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

Tennessee Williams

"I am widely regarded as the ghost of a writer," (1977), from New Selected Essays: Where I Live, ed. John S. Bak and John Lahr (New Directions Publishing, 2009)

Feeling , Confidence , Appearance , Wine

“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)

Bird , Tear , Sea

“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)

Way

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

Tennessee Williams

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.

Friendship , Relationship , For Friend , For Bestfriend