Tennessee Williams Quotes

Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.

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

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others, no sir.

I don’t want realism. I want magic!

I don’t mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don’t regard a home as a … well, as a place, a building … a house … of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can … well, nest.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.

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

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But 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.

What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

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