Quotes By Tennessee Williams

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.

You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

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.

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

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.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

Luck is believing you're lucky.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.