I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft – soft people have got to shimmer and glow – they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a – paper lantern over the light... It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I – I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.

— Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams Quotes

The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: “Hello – Goodbye!” and no address.

— Tennessee Williams

BLANCHE: You see I still have that awful vanity about my looks even now that my looks are slipping!

— Tennessee Williams

I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it.

— Tennessee Williams

I felt a great depression, probably because I never believed that anything would continue, would hold. I never thought my advance would maintain its ground. I always thought there would be a collapse immediately after the advance.

— Tennessee Williams

You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it.

— Tennessee Williams

And in the spring, it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before!

— Tennessee Williams
Romance

To be not alone, even for a few moments, is worth the pain and the danger.

— Tennessee Williams

But I think people always die alone... with or without relations.

— Tennessee Williams

Oh, I suppose I am sick, one of those weak and divided people who slip like shadows among you solid strong ones. But sometimes, out of necessity, we shadowy people take on a strength of our own.

— Tennessee Williams

Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.

— Tennessee Williams

You know, then, that the public Somebody you are when you “have a name” is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own volition – and knowing these things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!

— Tennessee Williams

The girl who said ‘no’ – she doesn’t exist anymore, she died last summer – suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her.

— Tennessee Williams

Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.

— Tennessee Williams

I cannot imagine any witch of a woman casting a spell over you.

— Tennessee Williams

You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it. Isn’t that right? Never had any anxiety about it, did it naturally, easily, slowly, with absolute confidence and perfect calm, more like opening a door for a lady or seating her at a table than giving expression to any longing for her. Your indifference made you wonderful at lovemaking – strange? – but true...

— Tennessee Williams

I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft – soft people have got to shimmer and glow – they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a – paper lantern over the light... It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I – I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.

— Tennessee Williams

I wish that you were my sister. I’d teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They’re one hundred times one thousand. You’re one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They’re common as – weeds, – but – you,- well – you’re – Blue Roses!

— Tennessee Williams

I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn “Rise and Shine!” “Rise and Shine!” I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are!

— Tennessee Williams

Why didn’t it happen between us? Why did I fail? Why did you come close enough... and not closer?

— Tennessee Williams

Read. Read a lot. Go home. Be quiet. Write. Write some more. It will soon be discovered if you are a writer.

— Tennessee Williams
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