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Just a few of his thoughts I especially like...
"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone."
"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go."
"Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is
preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation."
"To be free is to have achieved your life."
"We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!"
"The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and
am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone,
don't you?"
"Luck is believing you're lucky."
"Make voyages! Attempt them... there's nothing else."
"Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery
is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself."
"Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out
while you're watching."
"If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it."
"Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another
person."
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
"Straight? What's 'straight'? A line can be straight, or a street. But the heart of a human being?"
"If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having
concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed."
"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."
...
"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. Stanley sees Blanche not as a desperate, driven creature backed into a last corner to make a last desperate stand - but as a calculating bitch with 'round heels'.... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life."
(Tennessee Williams in Elia Kazan's autobiography A Life, 1988-)
About T. W. and his works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/williams_t.html
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams.html
"A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages."
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