Tennessee Williams Zitate

seite 4

„Wenn ich meine Dämonen los würde, würde ich meine Engel verlieren.“

„Ich habe den Mut zu sterben. Was ich wissen möchte ist, hast du den Mut zu leben?“

„Was ist gerade? Eine Linie kann gerade sein oder eine Straße; aber das menschliche Herz, oh nein, es ist gekrümmt wie eine Straße durch die Berge.“

„Es kommt eine Zeit, da schaust du in den Spiegel und erkennst, dass das, was du siehst, alles ist, was du jemals sein wirst. Und dann akzeptierst du es. Oder du bringst dich um. Oder du hörst auf in Spiegel zu schauen.“

„Ein Gebet für die mit wildem Herzen, die in Käfigen gehalten werden.“

„Wer ein schlechtes Gedächtnis hat, dem bleibt keine andere Wahl als die Wahrheit zu sagen.“

„Ich denke, dass Hass ein Gefühl ist, das nur existieren kann, wenn es kein Verständnis gibt.“

„Ich sage dir, dieses Europa ist nichts anderes als eine einzige große Auktion. Das ist alles, was man darüber sagen kann, nichts als ein großer Inventurausverkauf.“

„Die Zukunft heißt "vielleicht", nur so kann man die Zukunft nennen. Und das Wichtige ist, dass Sie sich davon nicht erschrecken lassen.“

„Revolution braucht nur gute Träumer, die sich an ihre Träume erinnern.“

„Man kann in einem großen Land etwas anpflanzen, das wichtiger ist als Baumwolle - Toleranz!“

„Aus dem hoffnungslos Vergänglichen das Ewige zu ergreifen ist der große Zaubertrick der menschlichen Existenz.“

„Die Leute gehen ins Kino, anstatt sich zu bewegen!“

„Ich glaube nicht, dass irgendjemand jemals ahnt, wie völlig unsicher ich über meine Arbeit und mich selbst bin und welche Qualen es mir immer gegeben haben, an den Zweifeln anderer zu zweifeln.“

„In der Erinnerung scheint alles zu Musik zu geschehen.“

„Liebst du nicht einfach diese langen regnerischen Nachmittage in New Orleans, wenn eine Stunde nicht nur eine Stunde ist - sondern ein kleines Stück Ewigkeit, dass in deine Hände gefallen ist - und wer weiß, was man damit anfangen soll?“

„Wenn so viele einsam sind, die einsam zu sein scheinen, wäre es unentschuldbar egoistisch, allein einsam zu sein.“

„In all den Jahren hast du nie geglaubt, dass ich dich liebe. Und das tat ich. Ich habe es so sehr getan. Ich habe dich geliebt. Ich habe sogar deinen Hass und deine Härte geliebt.“

„Wie schön es ist und wie leicht es zerbrochen werden kann.“

„Ich war immer auf die Freundlichkeit von Fremden angewiesen.“

“Young, gifted, and destitute…”

“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery -- love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me.”

“No, truth is something desperate, an' she's got it. Believe me, it's something desperate, an' she's got it.”

“How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?”

“It's interesting, isn't it?… the chandelier… it reminds me of mushroom soup.”

“A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young and believing”

“I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”

“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…”

“We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn't written about.”

“You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!”

“I took that horrible novel back to the library — yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them — BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!”

“The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You've come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!”

“I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.”

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!”

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

“I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: "Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there," it says, "and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place…”

“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.”

“Well, now I've said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I've seen Him!—and he meant God...”

“Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it … Success is shy — it won't come out while you're watching.”

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

“Things have a way of turning out so badly.”

“Eternity!—Didn't it give you the cold shivers?”

“And the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and—swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh.”

“Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.”

“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”

“You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!”

“Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum!”

“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!”

“The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arm still thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last. I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly very depressed.”