Quote

If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets.

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
Behaved
Nations
Way
Would
People

More quotes by 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
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
For there was a conspiracy of dullness in the world, a universal plan to shut out the resurgences of spirit which might interfere with clockwork. Better to keep your elevation unseen until it is higher than strangers' hands can reach to pull you down to their level.
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
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .
Tennessee Williams
Image
A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.
Tennessee Williams
Image
But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary
Tennessee Williams
Image
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
Tennessee Williams
Image
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
Image
-You're simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to... -To lay her cards out on the table.
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
There's no better credit card in the world than driving up at a bank door in a Cadillac limousine.
Tennessee Williams
Image
Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than--broken down.
Tennessee Williams
Image
An artist must believe in himself - Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence - but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say - He is vain - but they are affected.
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
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams
Image
I must endure & endure & still endure.
Tennessee Williams