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Tennessee Williams Quotes
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Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American playwright. Along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie , a play that closely reflected his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , and Sweet Bird of Youth . His later work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Much of Williams' most acclaimed work was adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

✵ 26. March 1911 – 25. February 1983
Tennessee Williams photo
Tennessee Williams: 139 quotes202 likes

Tennessee Williams Quotes

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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 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)

“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)

“I didn't go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Variant: Time is the longest distance between two places.
Source: The Glass Menagerie

“Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

“In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Five
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“Everybody is nothing until you love them.”

Tennessee Williams The Rose Tattoo

Source: The Rose Tattoo

“What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?”

Tennessee Williams Orpheus Descending

Source: Orpheus Descending

“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

Tennessee Williams

“Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye….”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

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