The helpless can’t help the helpless.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMSI don’t believe in “original sin.” I don’t believe in “guilt.” I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
More Tennessee Williams Quotes
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How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven’t I done time enough, haven’t I served my term? can’t I apply for a-pardon?
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It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance.
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A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
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Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.
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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.
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Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS -
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 recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS -
I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.
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And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.
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The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS -
Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS -
Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!
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.
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There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.
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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