Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Tennessee Williams Playwright

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Mar 26, 1911
  • Died: Feb 25, 1983

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American playwright and author of many stage classics.

After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie, closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth. His later work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output.

Williams adapted much of his best work for the cinema, and also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

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

To be free is to have achieved your life.

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

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

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

All good art is an indiscretion.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

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

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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

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

For time is the longest distance between two places.

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

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

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