Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

23 quotes

The American playwright Tennessee Williams is someone whose pithy observations have become part of everyday conversation. Whether reflecting on Work or Success, Tennessee Williams brought uncommon clarity to every subject. 27 of Tennessee Williams's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Work, Success, Life, Death, and Time. Here is a taste of their wisdom: "Success and failure are equally disastrous."

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“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

— Tennessee Williams

Life

All Quotes by Tennessee Williams

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

— Tennessee Williams

Life

“In memory everything seems to happen to music.”

— Tennessee Williams

Music

“You can be young without money but you can't be old without it.”

— Tennessee Williams

Money

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

— Tennessee Williams

Success

“The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?”

— Tennessee Williams

Work

“To be free is to have achieved your life.”

— Tennessee Williams

Life

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

— Tennessee Williams

Alone

“Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.”

— Tennessee Williams

Death

“Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.”

— Tennessee Williams

Success

“For time is the longest distance between two places.”

— Tennessee Williams

Time

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

— Tennessee Williams

God

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

— Tennessee Williams

Nature

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”

— Tennessee Williams

Nature

“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.”

— Tennessee Williams

Failure

“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

— Tennessee Williams

Failure

“The future is called 'perhaps,' which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.”

— Tennessee Williams

Future

“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

— Tennessee Williams

Life

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

— Tennessee Williams

Alone

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

— Tennessee Williams

Death

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

— Tennessee Williams

Time