Quote

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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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
Life
Tell
Aim
People
Art
Artistic
Truth
Ugly
Anything
Fashion
Omitted
Sometimes
Present
Occurs
Writing
Though
Shocking
Think
Artist
Surprised
Thinking
Write
Shock

More quotes by 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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There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams
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Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?
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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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
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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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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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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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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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Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!
Tennessee Williams
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I don't want realism. I want magic!
Tennessee Williams
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It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.
Tennessee Williams
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When things don’t change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.
Tennessee Williams
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Mexico is the front door to South America - and the back door to the states.
Tennessee Williams
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Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?
Tennessee Williams
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I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of.
Tennessee Williams
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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
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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
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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
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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