Tennessee Williams: Quotes about time

Tennessee Williams was American playwright. Explore interesting quotes on time.
Tennessee Williams: 278   quotes 202   likes

“I hope to die in my sleep, when the time comes, and I hope it will be in the beautiful big brass bed in my New Orleans apartment, the bed which is associated with so much love.”

Tennessee Williams
Love , Beauty , Hope , Sleep

“I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times.”

Tennessee Williams

Program notes for a Pasadena Playhouse production of Stairs to the Roof (1947)
Context: When I look back at Stairs to the Roof... I see its faults very plainly, as plainly as you may see them, but still I do not feel apologetic about this play. Unskilled and awkward as I was at this initial period of my playwriting, I certainly had a moral earnestness which I cannot boast of today, and I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times. I wish I still had the idealistic passion of Benjamin Murphy! You may smile as I do at the sometimes sophomoric aspect of his excitement, but I hope you will respect, as I do, the purity of his feeling and the honest concern which he had in his heart for the basic problem of mankind, which is to dignify our lives with a certain freedom.

Thinking , Time

“Every time you come in yelling that God damn "Rise and Shine!" "Rise and Shine!" I say to myself, "How lucky dead people are!"”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, Scene Three
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

God , People , Time , Dead

“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

Life , Death , Time

“The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.”

Tennessee Williams

Quoted in "Tennessee Williams" in Profiles (1990) by Kenneth Tynan (first published as a magazine article in February 1956)

People , Problem , Time

“How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Time

“The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You've come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!”

Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke

Alma, Scene Eleven
Summer and Smoke (1948)

People , Way , Thinking , Time

“I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding—not even that—no. Just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.”

Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth

Sweet Bird of Youth, Act 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=5eqagR0rbboC&q=%22I+don't+ask+for+your+pity+but+just+for+your+understanding+not+even+that+no+Just+for+your+recognition+of+me+in+you+and+the+enemy+time+in+us+all%22&pg=PA96#v=onepage (1959)

Understanding , Time

“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

“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

Time