533 Quotes by Tennessee Williams

I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. 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?

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

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.

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.

When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin' orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.