For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . . Tennessee Williams More Quotes by Tennessee Williams More Quotes From Tennessee Williams I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire. Tennessee Williams desire writing character The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn't so funny. Tennessee Williams paper way world I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth. - Blanche Scene II Tennessee Williams telling-the-truth important fifty For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type. Tennessee Williams eight play writing The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love. Tennessee Williams devouring goddess venus I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife! stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room encouraged by one in-law to visit another little birdlike women without any nest eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves? Tennessee Williams husband humility brother How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon? Tennessee Williams punishment doe long Things have a way of turning out so badly. Tennessee Williams menagerie destiny way And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Tennessee Williams blanche funeral The panic disappeared under those soothing old fingers and the breathing slowed down and stopped hurting the chest as if a fox was caught in it, and then at last Mr. Kroger began to lecture the boy as he used to, Pablo, he murmured, don't ever be so afraid of being lonely that you forget to be careful. Don't forget that you will find it sometimes but other times you won't be lucky, and those are the times when you have got to be patient, since patience is what you must have when you don't have luck. Tennessee Williams lonely hurt patience Revolution begins in putting on bright colors. Tennessee Williams bright-colors revolution color I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. Tennessee Williams block writing thinking Guessing isn't knowing. Tennessee Williams guessing knowing A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young an' believing. Tennessee Williams drinking food believe Kenneth Hari does not paint portraits as they are but as he is. I feel he is hiding something from me. To board a train into his mind would give me a ride into dark adventure. Tennessee Williams hiding-something dark adventure 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 compulsion stills writing I must endure & endure & still endure. Tennessee Williams endure stills Mexico is the front door to South America - and the back door to the states. Tennessee Williams mexico doors america Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance. Tennessee Williams essence reality art The process by which the idea for a play comes to me has always been something I really couldn't pinpoint. A play just seems to materialize; like an apparition, it gets clearer and clearer and clearer. It's very vague at first, as in the case of Streetcar, which came after Menagerie. I simply had the vision of a woman in her late youth. She was sitting in a chair all alone by a window with the moonlight streaming in on her desolate face, and she'd been stood up by the man she planned to marry. Tennessee Williams play men ideas
