Quote

I don't want realism. I want magic!

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
Blanche
Realism
Magic
Desire

More quotes by Tennessee Williams

Image
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
Tennessee Williams
Image
To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.
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
You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I gave up visiting my psychoanalyst because he was meddling too much in my private life.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you--gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--and I can! I'm determined to do it--and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof--is there?
Tennessee Williams
Image
Hysteria is a natural phenomenon, the common denominator of the female nature. It's the female weapon and the test of a man is his ability to cope with it.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams
Image
And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle.
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
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
It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.
Tennessee Williams
Image
A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
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
America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.
Tennessee Williams
Image
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.
Tennessee Williams
Image
It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance.
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