Tennessee Williams: Quotes about life

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

“We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”

“A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”

“Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.”

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

“Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.”

“My only point, the only point that I'm making, is life has got to be allowed to continue even after theof life is--all--over….”

“I'll be all right in a minute, I'm just bewildered - by life…”

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

“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.”

“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?”