Tennessee Williams: Thing

“Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Forgiveness

“The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.”

Tennessee Williams Orpheus Descending

Source: "The Past, the Present and the Perhaps," http://books.google.com/books?id=mTRaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+future+is+called+perhaps+which+is+the+only+possible+thing+to+call+the+future+And+the+important+thing+is+not+to+allow+that+to+scare+you%22&pg=PA7#v=onepage introduction to Orpheus Descending (1957)

Future

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

People , Truth

“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

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Truth , Appearance

“Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Beauty , Heart

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

Tennessee Williams

Life

“But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark -- that sort of make everything else seem -- unimportant.”

Tennessee Williams

“I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.
- Blanche Scene II”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Truth

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

People , Truth

“Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Variant: Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.
Source: The Glass Menagerie

Disappointment

“You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Dreams

“Well, now I've said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I've seen Him!—and he meant God...”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Mrs. Venable, Scene One
Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

God

“Things have a way of turning out so badly.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)