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"Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama."
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"Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arresting. One of them was unforgettable. The unforgettable one was done in florid wash colors, with a caption that read: 'Forgive Them Their Trespasses.' It showed three small boys fishing in an odd-looking body of water, one of their jackets draped over a 'No Fishing!' sign. The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantiasis in the other--an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart."

"Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy."

"Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs."

"Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival."

"That's oak leaf, for bravery. I've got Veronica and Honeysuckle, for fidelity and affection. And that's Peony, for shame. She lives under this rock.""Did you make that up by yourself?""'Course not. That's the language of flowers. Everyone knows that.""No, they don't. I don't.""Everyone used to know. They sent each other messages. Like Bluebells means, 'I'll always love you' and Jasmine means 'We're friends.' and Asphodels... Asphodels are for the dead."
Explore more quotes by Tennessee Williams

"I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world."

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"

"Chance, you've gone past something you couldn't afford to go past; your time, your youth, you've passed it. It's all you had and you've had it."

"And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing."

"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."

"What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?-I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can..."

"I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."
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