Great Throughts Treasury

"These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?"

"They told me to take a streetcar named desire and then transfer to on called cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian fields."

"There's no better credit card in the world than driving up at a bank door in a Cadillac limousine."

"Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation."

"Time goes by so fast. Nothing can outrun it. Death commences too early - almost before you're half acquainted with life - you meet the other..."

"This country of endured but unendurable pain."

"This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in."

"Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation."

"Val: Why do you go out there?Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice. Val: What advice do they give? Sandra: Just one word: live."

"To be free is to have achieved your life."

"Truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."

"Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than--broken down."

"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."

"We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going!"

"We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior."

"We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life."

"We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal."

"We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really?"

"We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life."

"We'll, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm."

"We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life."

"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... More croquet sounds. Later tonight I'm going to tell you I love you an maybe by that time you'll be drunk enough to believe me. Yes, they're playing croquet ...Big Daddy is dying of cancer ...What we're you thinking of when I caught you looking at me like that? We're you thinking of Skipper? Brick crosses to the bar, takes a quick drink, and rubs his head with a towel. Laws of silence don't work ...When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant ....Get dressed, Brick."

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it s curved like a road through mountains."

"What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?"

"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..."

"What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don’t bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can."

"When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking."

"When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing."

"When it comes you'll know that you're dead."

"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."

"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone"

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

"Why don't we meet these people and get to know them as I try to meet and know people in my plays?"

"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."

"Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?"

"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."

"You know, then that the public Somebody you are when you have a name is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath"

"You know what luck is? Luck is believing you're lucky.... To hold front position in this rat-race you've got to believe you are lucky."

"You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams."

"You've got many refinements. I don't think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with."

"Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,"