Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26th, 1911 – February 25th, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. He is considered one of the foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
At age 33 Williams became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. It was the first of several successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Below we list words of wisdom from Tennessee Williams.
“You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.”
“Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people?”
“Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one that you love doesn’t love you.”
“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”
“Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.”
“Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!”
“Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.”
“Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families”
“If you can’t be yourself, what’s the point of being anyone else?”
“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
“The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.”
“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
“There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts.”
“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”
“To change is to live, to live is to change, and not to change is to die.”
“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.”
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!”
“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”
“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.”
“Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.”
“The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.”
“Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.”
“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”
“In memory everything seems to happen to music.”
“Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”
“The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.”
“Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other.”
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”
“We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”
“Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.”
“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”
“We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us. Just tell the story and go on to the next one. All of us are full of stories the world might want to hear.”
“I don’t believe in ‘original sin.’ I don’t believe in ‘guilt.’ I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents. This is so simple I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m sure it’s true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that’s why I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.”
“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”
Copyright © 2026 Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo
Our FREE Spiritual Detox Script can help you get rid of toxic energy and help you make the most of your life. http://spiritualgrowthnow.com/script/
Learn more about spiritual myths, meditation and how to use it to your advantage, and much more with our Direct Your Destiny e-Package: http://spiritualgrowthnow.com/directyourdestiny/