Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Giving
Good
People
Sandra
Advice
Dead
Word
Give
Live

More quotes by Tennessee Williams

Image
Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Vanity, fear, desire, competition - all such distortions within our own egos - condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Everybody is nothing until you love them.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.
Tennessee Williams
Image
attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Oh, I haven't reached any peak. I hit the bottom in the '60s. When a certain actress undertook the leading role in a recent play of mine, she referred to me as that old derelict. Not to my face, but behind my back.
Tennessee Williams
Image
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .
Tennessee Williams
Image
Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.
Tennessee Williams
Image
If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I can find almost anything funny, thank God, so you search for the black, lacy slip that encases the corpse. You know, shift the angle. God may take away, but he often leaves you with a terrific opening line for the next adventure. I would suggest taking it. Move on change the angle look at it in a different way tomorrow.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I'm not in sympathy with Communism except for populations which are in a state of peasantry, actually hungry and starving. The ideal state for me is some form of Socialism, which doesn't yet exist, as far as I know, which doesn't repress the arts, or any race. Consequently I'm not a political person ... except that I'm a revolutionary.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?
Tennessee Williams
Image
William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. In the time of your life--live! That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its oppositi
Tennessee Williams
Image
Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!
Tennessee Williams
Image
We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really?
Tennessee Williams
Image
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
Image
For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.
Tennessee Williams