You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Money, Youth
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Solitude, Loneliness, Isolation
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
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
Topics: Death, Medicine, Time
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
Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion.
—Tennessee Williams
When I stop (working), the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m working.
—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
Topics: Secrets of Success, 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
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Honesty, Truth
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Help
Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Memory, Generations, Memories
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: Motivation, Motivational, Adversity, Difficulties
Time is the longest distance between two places.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Time Management, Time
Talent? What is talent but the ability to get away with something?
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Talent
Luck is believing you’re lucky.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Fortune, Luck
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Wealth
Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Suffering
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: Abilities, Work, Talents
The future is called “perhaps,” which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: The Future, Future, Anxiety, Fear, Tomorrow
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Nature
I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Kindness
We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
There is a time for departure, even when there’s no certain place to go.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Time, Moving on, Doubt, Life, Uncertainty, Change
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.
—Tennessee Williams
Security is a kind of death.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Kind, Death, Security, Safety
High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Memory, Memories
You’ve got many refinements. I don’t think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Women
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Success is not everything, Success & Failure, Success
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Motter Inge American Playwright
Marsha Norman American Playwright
Thornton Wilder American Novelist, Dramatist
Lillian Hellman American Playwright
Arthur Miller American Playwright
Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
Clare Boothe Luce American Playwright
William Saroyan American Playwright, Novelist
Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
Natalie Clifford Barney American Literary Figure