Tennessee Williams Quotes

I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers. – Tennessee Williams

Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation. – Tennessee Williams

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. – Tennessee Williams

I don’t want realism. I want magic! – Tennessee Williams

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life! – Tennessee Williams

We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love. – Tennessee Williams

A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages. – Tennessee Williams

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go. – Tennessee Williams

People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them. – Tennessee Williams

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

Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else. – 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 dreams. – 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

The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing to call the future. – Tennessee Williams

I allow myself to have conversations with spirits. I don’t quite know with whom. – Tennessee Williams

Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty. – Tennessee Williams

Mendacity is a system we live in. Liquor is one way out and death’s the other. – Tennessee Williams

Don’t say you’re trapped, Alysha—sounds like you’re appealing for ransom. You’re not trapped; you’re merely defeated. – Tennessee Williams

It’s almost as if you had a lovely nymph swimming in a pool of anger. – Tennessee Williams

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

Success and failure are equally disastrous. – Tennessee Williams

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

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

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

Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not. – Tennessee Williams

A man is a fine thing, and he can do splendidly if he believes in himself. – Tennessee Williams

Luck is believing you’re lucky. – Tennessee Williams

I don’t suppose anyone ever quite gets over anything in life. – Tennessee Williams

Man—man’s the only monster on earth—therefore, man’s the only one who can forgive his own monstrosity. – Tennessee Williams

Night falls, day breaks, time has a funny kind of violence and I’m trying to keep in mind. It’s alright, doing the best I can. – Tennessee Williams

I don’t want to make generalizations about a sex so different in its behavior, except to say this: when women have reached menopause, they have a depth of love in them, or at least in some of them, that I don’t even think they could be capable of in their procreative years. – Tennessee Williams

I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage. – Tennessee Williams

Just remember what Huey Long said—that every man’s a king—and I’m the king around here, so don’t forget it! – Tennessee Williams

When a streetcar mechanic says he’s got the power, and the only powers that has would give me the power to be a little bit less dependent on…people. – Tennessee Williams

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation. – Tennessee Williams

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. – Tennessee Williams

A little trouble and strife helps a man to grow. – Tennessee Williams

In memory everything seems to happen to music. – Tennessee Williams

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life! – Tennessee Williams

There’s not a damned thing nicer than a miserable woman once she gets really miserable. It’s a weakness. – Tennessee Williams

We were flightless birds, landlocked in a room, doomed to argue ourselves into being human. – Tennessee Williams

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar who is also a hypocrite. – Tennessee Williams

Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable! It is the one unforgivable thing, in my opinion, and the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty. – Tennessee Williams

Why, if I did not dream and hope I would be nothing but a poor, old, dead woman today! – Tennessee Williams

Everyone yearns for poetry and danger. – Tennessee Williams

Today it is almost impossible to kiss a stranger unless you do it with the nametag of an airline. – Tennessee Williams

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite. – Tennessee Williams

Time is the longest distance between two places. – Tennessee Williams

No one writes more passionately than a man who was once hurt deeply. – Tennessee Williams

You are a poem Prime. – Tennessee Williams