Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The word 'brother' can incite strong emotions and conflicts among people, highlighting the complexities of familial and societal bonds.
Tennessee Williams suggests that the term 'brother' carries a significant emotional weight that can lead to intense disagreements and disputes. This highlights how familial ties and the concept of kinship, while often seen as positive, can also provoke deep-seated conflicts, particularly when coupled with issues of loyalty, expectation, and rivalry. The quote reflects on the paradox of close relationships β they can be both nurturing and perilous.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about family dynamics, one might refer to this quote to illustrate the potential for conflict within close relationships.
More from Tennessee Williams
All quotes βTime 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 hasnΒ΄t known any sorrow and IΒ΄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 β 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.
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It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
The worst thing you can do for anyone you care about is anything that they can do on their own.
She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what one feels in any satisfactory way is one of our enduring tragedies. It wouldn't have been much, and it wouldn't have been useful, but it would have been something that reflected the gravity and the sadness inside her. Instead, she had snapped at him for being a loser. It was as if she were trying to find a handhold on the boulder of her feelings, and had merely ended up with grit under her nails.
Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything
We women feel we are here to serve. That's the mistake we make. We may have children, husbands, lovers, bills, responsibility. Those things don't own us, but too often we let them.
Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.