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Tennessee Williams quotes

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“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“But some things are not forgivable. 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, A Streetcar Named Desire
“Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour—but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and who knows what to do with it?” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“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.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart–and I have all of those things–aren't taken away, but grow! Increase with the years!” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“I don't want realism. I want magic!” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“Go to the moon — you selfish dreamer!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery—love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me.” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“In memory everything seems to happen to music.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Full steam — Knowledge — Zzzzzp! Money — Zzzzzzp! — Power! That’s the cycle democracy is built on!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further — for time is the longest distance between two places.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.” Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“It’s no tragedy, Freckles. Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“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 Glass Menagerie
“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Some people say that science clears up all the mysteries for us. In my opinion it only creates more!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“She lives in a world of her own — a world of little glass ornaments, Mother...” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“Possess your soul in patience — you will see!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“I go to the movies because — I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recours to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“the human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others” Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Related topics

love truth magic illusion fragility beauty time dream work money memory science poetry regret moon distance glass forgiveness adventure heart

Related sources

The Glass Menagerie (22)
A Streetcar Named Desire (9)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2)