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

— Tennessee Williams

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...

— Tennessee Williams

When things don't change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.

— Tennessee Williams

When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

— Tennessee Williams

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

— Tennessee Williams

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

— Tennessee Williams

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies, and I am about to move!

— Tennessee Williams

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

— Tennessee Williams

You have a spark of anarchy in your spirit and that's not to be tolerated. Nothing wild or honest is tolerated her! It has to be extinguished...

— Tennessee Williams

You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!

— Tennessee Williams