27 Best Quotes by Playwright Tennessee Williams

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life.

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

All good art is an indiscretion.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

Death is one moment and life is so many of them.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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.

The future is called ‘perhaps’ which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

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. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

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.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. 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?

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.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.