Quotes By Tennessee Williams

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

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

All good art is an indiscretion.

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

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

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.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

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.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

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

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.