Quotes by Tennessee Williams

About Tennessee Williams:

Thomas Lanier is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th century American drama.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. A...

Tennessee Williams

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.

Tennessee Williams

The apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire-escape, a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation.

Tennessee Williams

-The little comfort of love? -Is that comfort so little? -Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.

Tennessee Williams

One man has one great true thing in his life. One great good thing that is true!

Tennessee Williams

I don't mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don't regard a home as a...well, as a place, a building...a house...of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each ca...

Tennessee Williams

...human beings dream of life everlasting. But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven.

Tennessee Williams

It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature

Tennessee Williams

Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.

Tennessee Williams

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

Tennessee Williams

It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.

Tennessee Williams

You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dr...

Tennessee Williams

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

Tennessee Williams

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

Tennessee Williams

Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft.The metal point's gone from my pen, there's nothing left but the feather. Gutman:That may be true.But what can you do about it? Byron:Make a departure. Gutman:From yourself? Byron:From my present se...

Tennessee Williams

...the human animal is a selfish beast...

Tennessee Williams

You have a spark of anarchy in your spirit and that's not to be tolerated. Nothing wild or honest is tolerated her! It has to be extinguished...

Tennessee Williams

There's a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

Tennessee Williams

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire...

Tennessee Williams

Author Bio

  • NameTennessee Williams
  • DescriptionAmerican playwright
  • AliasesThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III; Thomas Lanier Williams III
  • BornMarch 26, 1911
  • DiedFebruary 25, 1983
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPlaywright; Novelist; Screenwriter; Writer
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For Drama