Follies of God Quotes

“Blanche told us she depended upon the kindness of strangers,” Tenn said, “but in fact she had never in her life ever met a kind stranger. She dreamed she might, and she hoped that such flattery might convince her captor to be the kind stranger of her dreams.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“If you’re a writer, you write. If you don’t, you’re dead. You have no home, no reason to be offered a seat at any table, and no reason to live.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“I fear,” he told me, “never experiencing love or appreciation or affection. On one level—on one day—I will believe myself unworthy of them, so my fears appear justified. On another day, I will very grandly believe I have been unjustifiably denied these things, deserve them in spades, and aggressively pursue them. The aggression I display at these times initially excites me, but afterwards—after the manic, muscular display—I am horrified.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“My places were emotional, primarily. I wrote of locales in which I had lived, or in which I imagined I could live, but the topography was primal and sexual and terminal. It bore no distinct architecture or design or dialect. It was merely human and in peril, which is to say universal. But on Royal and Coliseum and Vista--streets I cannot relinquish--I found my places and I dreamed a narrative. Can I go there and find it again?"--Tennessee Williams”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“She was remarkable in a double bill of Harold Pinter plays that were gorgeously produced, delicately and frighteningly performed, and which made absolutely no sense whatsoever: in other words, quintessential Pinter.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“The Glass Menagerie is the play of Tenn’s that was most often abused, badly directed, misunderstood. This baffled him, because his stage directions are lengthy and precise—and frequently ignored.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“How does the pretty girl know she is pretty? Her witnesses testify to the fact that she is unique, that her peers lack something in pigment or stature. How can we know that we have talent until our words or the manner in which we speak them moves someone? Makes them think outside the puny lines into which they’ve colored themselves? We can’t know that we have the power to break these lines apart with thought until we have our first witness, that person who tells us what we have done.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“I pray to the emptiness that is the page,” Tenn said, “and I pray to the emptiness that is my mind, and I ask that I be filled.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“movies, sex, and food. “A trinity I would willfully worship today,” Tenn quipped.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“It won’t be easy to understand people, ever,” Tenn told me, “but our lives require us to keep trying.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“Earth as we know it,” Tenn explained, “bears no relation to Miss Gish. Or I should say: she respects it only as a prop, something Mr. Griffith commissioned for her to act upon. It is not a spinning planet in the cosmos; it does not provide a home to other people making their way or finding a purpose. The Earth and all of its inhabitants and all of its resources are placed in a particular order so that the destiny of Lillian Gish can be realized.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“I pray that we will care to be big—of heart, of soul, of pocket, of industry, of daring—to magnify who and what we are through whatever means we have—in art, in living, in being. This is a great undertaking; it has value; it has saved so many; it is dying, but it is always in the process of dying, and is always rescued by those who recognize its frailty, its grandeur, and its necessity. Our greatness often lies in saving something that will be of use to souls unknown to us.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“no art on earth is a cure or a replacement. You have to have a life. You have to love and be betrayed and heal and move on and start all over again, and there is no church or book or slogan or some single person who can give you something that will make it all work for you. No one.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“When we can’t imagine understanding or loving a God or some other myth of support, we attach ourselves to artistic symbols: the lost soul; the waif; the abused artist. This is all utter nonsense. Get to work. Work hard and well. Your troubles are no one’s business but your own. Don’t be a Pharisee extolling yourself on the street—take it inside; use it; share it; overcome it.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“To live is to be destroyed,” Le G told me. “There is no other way to get through life. We have to have hopes and we have to witness them being shattered; we have to love and we have to lose; we have to fail; we have to find ourselves depleted of faith. I have been destroyed repeatedly, but I have been able to recuperate; I have been able to mend myself; to love and to be loved; to find some other way of working.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“Here is the importance of bearing witness. We do not grow alone, talents do not prosper in a hothouse of ambition and neglect and hungry anger; love does not arrive by horseback or prayer or good intentions. We need the eyes, the arms, and the witness of others to grow, to know that we have existed, that we have mattered, that we have made our mark. And each of us has a distinct mark that colors our surroundings, that flavors the recipe of ‘experience’ in which we find ourselves; but we remain blind, without identity, until someone witnesses us.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“When I was young,” Tenn told me, “I never sought out a woman, a character. She came to me. She had a story to tell, urgently, violently, fervently. I listened and I identified, and I became her most ardent supporter and witness. I cannot get a witness for me and I cannot be a witness for anyone! I cannot find a woman who will speak to me on my stage.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“Tenn believed that writers, all artists, had several homes. There was the biological place of birth; the home in which one grew up, bore witness, fell apart. There was also the place where the "epiphanies" began-a school, a church, perhaps a bed. Rockets were launched and an identity began to be set. There was the physical location where a writer sat each day and scribbled and hunted and pecked and dreamed and drank and cursed his way into a story or a play or a novel. Most importantly, however, there was the emotional, invisible, self-invented place where work began-what Tenn called his "mental theatre," a cerebral proscenium stage upon which his characters walked and stumbled and remained locked forever in his memory, ready, he felt, to be called into action and help him again.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“When Tenn first walked into the small apartment kept by William Inge in St. Louis, he noticed a piece of onionskin paper, folded in half and taped to the wall above his typewriter. On the page was written “Le monde est fait pour aboutir à un beau livre.” The translation: “The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.” The quote came from Mallarmé, a poet unknown to Tenn.”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

“How can we know that we have talent until our words or the manner in which we speak them moves someone?”
― James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog