There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors. Tennessee Williams More Quotes by Tennessee Williams More Quotes From Tennessee Williams Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down... So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function! Tennessee Williams chance animal giving 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 congratulations artist success I don't have an audience in mind when I write. I'm writing mainly for myself. After a long devotion to playwriting I have a good inner ear. I know pretty well how a thing is going to sound on the stage, and how it will play. I write to satisfy this inner ear and its perceptions. That's the audience I write for. Tennessee Williams play writing long When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking. Tennessee Williams fashion writing art Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense. Tennessee Williams confidence fake-people wine I can find almost anything funny, thank God, so you search for the black, lacy slip that encases the corpse. You know, shift the angle. God may take away, but he often leaves you with a terrific opening line for the next adventure. I would suggest taking it. Move on; change the angle; look at it in a different way tomorrow. Tennessee Williams black adventure moving We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we're doing, if we're selling it, if the listener likes us. Just tell the story and go on to the next one. All of us are full of stories the world might want to hear. Tennessee Williams magic want might A woman's charm is fifty percent illusion. Tennessee Williams illusion women fifty We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really? Tennessee Williams levels real two Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many! Tennessee Williams men people looks Why is it so damn hard for people to talk? Tennessee Williams hard damn people If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people and with violent material. I don't regret having concerned myself with such people, because I think that most of us are disturbed. Tennessee Williams regret people thinking All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. Tennessee Williams loser want desire Marriage is an economic arrangement in many ways, let's face it. Tennessee Williams marriage faces way I don't think a married couple can go through life without laughs together any more than they can without tears. Tennessee Williams couple laughing thinking I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency. Tennessee Williams howl fighting persons And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into... Tennessee Williams drunk together lying Q.Do you have any positive message, in your opinion? A.Indeed I do think that I do. Q.Such as what? A.The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have involuntarily chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole. Tennessee Williams duplicity men thinking But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark -- that sort of make everything else seem -- unimportant. Tennessee Williams dark happens men Oh, Jacques, we're used to each other, we're a pair of captive hawks caught in the same cage, and so we've grown used to each other. That's what passes for love at this dim, shadowy end of the Camino Real. Tennessee Williams hawks real love
