Tennessee Williams: Quotes about life

Tennessee Williams was American playwright. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Tennessee Williams: 278 quotes202 likes

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”

Tennessee Williams The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

Source: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

“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.”

Tennessee Williams

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

Tennessee Williams Orpheus Descending

Val ( Act 2, Scene 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=oOhF2S_tsIoC&amp;q=%22We&#x27;re+all+of+us+sentenced+to+solitary+confinement+inside+our+own+skins+for+life%22&amp;pg=PA33#v=onepage) <br class="br">Orpheus Descending (1957)

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

Tennessee Williams

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

Tennessee Williams

“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.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“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….”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“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.

“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)