Tennessee Williams Quotes

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! — for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…

We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn't written about.

I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.

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!

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.

You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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…

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