Tennessee Williams Quotes

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“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?”

“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!”

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

“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!”

“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!”

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

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

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

“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.”

“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!”

“Everybody is nothing until you love them.”

“Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.”

“Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families”

“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?”

“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

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

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