High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it … Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Success
You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Youth, Money
Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Solitude, Loneliness, Isolation
Every artist has a basic premise pervading his whole life, and that premise can provide the impulse to everything he creates. For me the dominating premise has been the need for understanding and tenderness and fortitude among individuals trapped by circumstance.
—Tennessee Williams
Security is a kind of death.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Security, Death
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Truth, Honesty
Everyone says he’s sincere, but everyone isn’t sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he’s sincere there wouldn’t be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!
—Tennessee Williams
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Motter Inge American Playwright
Marsha Norman American Playwright
Thornton Wilder American Novelist, Dramatist
Lillian Hellman American Playwright
Arthur Miller American Playwright
Clare Boothe Luce American Playwright
Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
Natalie Clifford Barney American Playwright
Wilson Mizner American Playwright
Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer