Quote

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.

Tennessee Williams

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Tennessee Williams
Age: 70 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 26
Died: 1985
Died: February 25
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Columbus
Mississippi
Thomas Lanier Williams III
Thomas Lanier Williams
Thomas Williams
House
Burns
Live
Trapped
Look
Locked
Looks
Department
Way
Crisis
Window
Fire
Leavers
Call
Upstairs

More quotes by Tennessee Williams

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I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.
Tennessee Williams
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What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.
Tennessee Williams
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I'm tired and it's taking an increasing amount out of me, more than I have to give physically. And that's why I want to move to Sicily and buy that little farm and raise a flock of goats and geese. I find it peaceful ... and it would be a nice way to end life.
Tennessee Williams
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Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.
Tennessee Williams
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Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.
Tennessee Williams
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I don't mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don't regard a home as a...well, as a place, a building...a house...of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can...well, nest.
Tennessee Williams
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Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Tennessee Williams
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We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really?
Tennessee Williams
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My '60s plays were as good as most of the other plays I've written ... except I wasn't in a condition to refine them, to help in the rehearsal, or do anything. I was hardly conscious of what was going on except during the hours of the day when I was actually writing ... and that was with the aid of speed.
Tennessee Williams
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People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.
Tennessee Williams
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When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.
Tennessee Williams
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Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!
Tennessee Williams
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We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.
Tennessee Williams
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You know, then that the public Somebody you are when you 'have a name' is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath
Tennessee Williams
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The name of a person you love is more than language.
Tennessee Williams
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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
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Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than--broken down.
Tennessee Williams
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A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee Williams
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I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do, then go ahead and do it with ease.
Tennessee Williams
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Val: Why do you go out there? Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice. Val: What advice do they give? Sandra: Just one word- live!
Tennessee Williams