Tennessee Williams Quotes - Page 3

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

Nothing's more determined than a cat on a hot tin roof.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

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?

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.

I gave up visiting my psychoanalyst because he was meddling too much in my private life.

I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark -- that sort of make everything else seem -- unimportant.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

There's no better credit card in the world than driving up at a bank door in a Cadillac limousine.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Talent? What is talent but the ability to get away with something?

All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur.

When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin' orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

We've had this date with each other from the beginning.