Tennessee Williams – 23 Quotes

23 Quotes by Tennessee Williams

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

– Tennessee Williams

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

– Tennessee Williams

All good art is an indiscretion.

– Tennessee Williams

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

– Tennessee Williams

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

– 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

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

– Tennessee Williams

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

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

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

– Tennessee Williams

To be free is to have achieved your life.

– 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

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

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.

– Tennessee Williams

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

– Tennessee Williams

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

– Tennessee Williams

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

– Tennessee Williams

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

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

Time is the longest distance between two places.

– Tennessee Williams

For time is the longest distance between two places.

– Tennessee Williams

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

– Tennessee Williams

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