37 quotes
I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding—not even that—no. Just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.
You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!
Summer and Smoke (1948)
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But 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.
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
I'll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less — freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns…
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Yes, we all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn't written about.
Suddenly Last Summer (1958)
A Prayer for the Wild at Heart That Are Kept in Cages
Stairs to the Roof (1941)
Why you're not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it — develop charm — and vivacity — and — charm!
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down… So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
Misattributed
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it … Success is shy — it won't come out while you're watching.
Misattributed
The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.
Disputed