I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do, then go ahead and do it with ease.
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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The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love.
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We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us.
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The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.
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They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!
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This is so simple I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m sure it’s true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that’s why I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.
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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.
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Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.
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Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.
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We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going!
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The biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven’t and hadn’t any pleasure in love, but just watched with sick envy.
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He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
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A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
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When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse.
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Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.
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What you need is someone to take hold of you–gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of–and I can! I’m determined to do it–and nothing’s more determined than a cat on a tin roof–is there?
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I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.
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I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of.
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I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.
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If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
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The name of a person you love is more than language.
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Just tell the story and go on to the next one. All of us are full of stories the world might want to hear.
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A bedroom is just as nice as whoever sleeps in it with you.
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When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
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America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.
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Marriage is an economic arrangement in many ways, let’s face it.
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The human heart would never pass the drunk test…. If you took the human heart out of the human body and put a pair of legs on it and told it to walk a straight line, it couldn’t do it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS