Quotes from work
The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his histrionic mother, and his mentally fragile sister Laura. In writing the play, Williams drew on an earlier short story, as well as a screenplay he had written under the title of The Gentleman Caller.

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!
Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“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!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…
Tom, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“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)

“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!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Power!
Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“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)

“Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Laura, Scene Two
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, Scene Four
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

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

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“I took that horrible novel back to the library — yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them — BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Three
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“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)

“I'll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less — freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns…”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Laura, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“Possess your soul in patience - you will see!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

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

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

“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

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

“attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

“She lives in a world of her own – a world of – little glass ornaments…”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

“Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

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