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Not facing a fire doesn't put it out.

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
Facing
Fire
Doesn

More quotes by Tennessee Williams

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In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.
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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Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!
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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
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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
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In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.
Tennessee Williams
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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
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I talk out the lines as I write them.
Tennessee Williams
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America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.
Tennessee Williams
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Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!
Tennessee Williams
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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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Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
Tennessee Williams
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We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going!
Tennessee Williams
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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
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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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Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down... So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!
Tennessee Williams
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Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.
Tennessee Williams
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But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary
Tennessee Williams
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A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.
Tennessee Williams
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The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.
Tennessee Williams