Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.
The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the feeling of being overwhelmed by life's experiences and the unexpected nature of memories and emotions.
Tennessee Williams captures a poignant moment of introspection where the narrator feels swept away by the hustle and bustle of city life, akin to colorful leaves that have lost their connection to their source. This imagery symbolizes the transient beauty of moments past and the unexpected triggers that evoke nostalgia, illustrating how memories and feelings can catch us off-guard, sometimes evoking feelings of loss and longing for what has been left behind.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a reflective speech at a gathering, one might use this quote to express the fleeting nature of life moments.
More from Tennessee Williams
All quotes →Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die — with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.
Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
Similar quotes
I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
I'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.
The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I've got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.