Inspirational Quotes by Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

Tennessee Williams (1911–83) was an American dramatist celebrated for the themes and the emotions he explored in his plays, many of which were adapted into movies, as well as for his gallery of memorable characters. He is considered the most important Southern playwright of the twentieth century, perhaps second only to Eugene O’Neill among all American playwrights.

Born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, Williams studied in Missouri, Iowa, and at Columbia University. He achieved success with the semi-autobiographical The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947,) which deal with the tragedy of vulnerable heroines living in delicate make-believe worlds that are crushed by brutal reality. His other prominent works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and The Night of the Iguana (1961.)

Williams also composed poetry, short stories, and two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975.) His autobiographical Memoirs (1975,) written during a long illness that followed his psychiatric breakdown, are the revelations of a homosexual outsider living with the burden of an unforgiving preoccupation with shame.

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We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Society

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
Topics: Secrets of Success, Success

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Defense, Betrayal, Doubt

Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Perspective, Risk, Moving on

Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity

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
Topics: Luxury, Success & Failure, Success

Oh you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Help

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Humanity, Humankind

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Difficulty

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Suffering

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Money, Youth

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams

Success and failure are equally disastrous.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Success, Success is not everything, Success & Failure

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Hypocrisy

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Solitude, Isolation, Loneliness

There is a time for departure, even when there’s no certain place to go.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Uncertainty, Moving on, Change, Doubt, Time, Life

I wrote because I had to. I couldn’t stop. There wasn’t anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I’d still be writing. It’s beyond a compulsion.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Talents, Abilities, Work

But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Spirit

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Nature

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Lies, Lying, Deception/Lying

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion

To be free is to have achieved your life.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Achievement

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Dignity, Life

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Memory

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
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties, Motivation, Motivational

Guilt is universal.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Guilt

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Truth, Honesty

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Wealth

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Help

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Loneliness

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Inspirational Quotes by Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

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