Tennessee Williams (1911–83) was an American dramatist celebrated for the themes and the emotions he explored in his plays, many of which were adapted into movies, as well as for his gallery of memorable characters. He is considered the most important Southern playwright of the twentieth century, perhaps second only to Eugene O’Neill among all American playwrights.
Born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, Williams studied in Missouri, Iowa, and at Columbia University. He achieved success with the semi-autobiographical The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947,) which deal with the tragedy of vulnerable heroines living in delicate make-believe worlds that are crushed by brutal reality. His other prominent works include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and The Night of the Iguana (1961.)
Williams also composed poetry, short stories, and two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975.) His autobiographical Memoirs (1975,) written during a long illness that followed his psychiatric breakdown, are the revelations of a homosexual outsider living with the burden of an unforgiving preoccupation with shame.
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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
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Solitude, Isolation, Loneliness
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
High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
—Tennessee Williams
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
—Tennessee Williams
Topics: Truth, Honesty
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