Menagerie Quotes

• 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.

  Tennessee Williams

  Truth, Opposites, Giving

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

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• All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.

  Tennessee Williams

  Funny, Girl, Hilarious

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

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• Girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man.

  Tennessee Williams

  Girl, Nice, Cutting

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.17, New Directions Publishing

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• Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!

  Tennessee Williams

  Selfish, Moon, Dreamer

  Tennessee Williams (1996). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.75, Heinemann

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• For time is the longest distance between two places.

  Tennessee Williams

  Time, Distance, Two

  The Glass Menagerie (1945) p. 123

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• Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

  Tennessee Williams

  Glasses, Matter, Break

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.86, New Directions Publishing

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• For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .

  Tennessee Williams

  Goodbye, Blow, Lightning

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

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• attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.

  Tennessee Williams

  Space, Lost, Attempting

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• In memory everything seems to happen to music.

  Tennessee Williams

  Music, Memories, Recollection

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

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

  Tennessee Williams

  Men, Play, Hunters

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

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• 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.

  Tennessee Williams

  Regret, Past, Men

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.45, New Directions Publishing

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• People go to the movies instead of moving.

  Tennessee Williams

  Moving, People

  Tennessee Williams (2014). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.61, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

  Bernadette Peters

  Mother, Glasses, Play

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Things have a way of turning out so badly.

  Tennessee Williams

  Destiny, Way

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.94, New Directions Publishing

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• People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them.

  Tennessee Williams

  Moving, Adventure, Character

  Tennessee Williams (1996). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.47, Heinemann

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• Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

  Tennessee Williams

  Discouraged, Being Disappointed, I Am Disappointed

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.78, New Directions Publishing

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• Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.

  Tennessee Williams

  Light, Elbows, Cigarette

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.79, New Directions Publishing

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• To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.

  Tennessee Williams

  School, Eye, Class

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

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• 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.

  Tennessee Williams

  Glasses, Cities, Pieces

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

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• What is the importance of human lives? Is it their continuing alive for so many years like animals in a menagerie? The value of a man cannot be judged by the number of diseases from which he escapes. The value of a man is in his human qualities: in his character, in his conscience, in the nobility and magnanimity, of his soul. Torturing animals to prolong human life has separated science from the most important thing that life has produced - the human conscience.

  John Cowper Powys

  Character, Animal, Men

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• As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie.

  Henry Miller

  Departed, Dawn, Alive

  "A Henry Miller reader".

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• When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room.

  Karl Kraus

  Believe, Sleep, Insomnia

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Character, Mean

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• The context for music is varied and profound. If their fantasy is to be awakened-so that their sounds may be incisive or ravishing-then the menagerie of saints and dragons must be faithfully recalled.

  Russell Sherman

  Dragons, Profound, Sound

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• Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Animal, Men, Stirring

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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