Tennessee Williams Quotes

All the quirks you've spent years trying to hide, they are actually your superpowers; they're what set you apart. They don't make you better. They don't make you worse. They make you you, and only you can be that.

When we embrace the things that make us unique, our true and remarkable capabilities are revealed

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.

We knew our strengths and played up our assets. But we couldn't see what made us unique enough for someone to really love us.

We have different forms assigned to us in the school of life, different gifts imparted. All is not attractive that is good. Iron is useful, though it does not sparkle like the diamond. Gold has not the fragrance of a flower. So different persons have various modes of excellence, and we must have an eye to all.

Remember what things make you special and embrace those because there are so many things that aren’t on the outside that are so important and people find so beautiful.

Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers. Because of these judgments, we might see our strengths as disabilities and try to work around them in order to fit in. But anything that is peculiar to our makeup is precisely what we must pay the deepest attention to and lean on in our rise to mastery.

In a world full of people, only some want to fly. Isn't that crazy?

…but then I am unlike other people I dare say.

What sets you apart can feel like a burden, but it's not.

People always ask me: 'When is the new Pele going to be born?' Never. My father and mother have closed the factory.

People laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success. I didn't look like anyone.

That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.

For young women, I would say don't worry so much about your weight. Girls spend way too much time thinking about that, and there are better things. For young men, and women, too, what makes you different or weird-that's your strength. Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up. I used to hate my nose. Now I don't. It's OK.

It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.

Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.

Before you go into what is essentially a competition, you have to have that confidence. You have to ask yourself, "Are they looking for a guy my height? My age? I've got a shot." And if there are nine guys auditioning and they're all gorgeous, I have an advantage, because gorgeous guys are a dime a dozen. But if they need someone else - like a goofy guy with bad hair who is just okay - then that's me. And finally, the other 2 percent who audition are geniuses that I could never touch.

It's only when you look back sometimes and you look at some people in your life and you're like, Oh my god, there was something so pure about that. The thing that kind of bugged me, maybe, is the thing that's so unique.

If you're remarkable it's likely that some people won't like you.

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

People want you to be ordinary. They don't like it when people are different. They don't like it when a man soars over their heads while they stand in the dirt. People hate you when you're special; it reminds them of everything that they aren't.

If you think you’re average, then you’ll be average. If you think you’re ordinary, then you’ll live ordinary. The truth is, there is nothing ordinary about you. You have something to offer that nobody else can offer.

As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.

The character is a piece of fiction. You are yourself, however, and that makes you interesting, because you're alive and you're a human being.

Console yourself, dear man and brother; whatever you may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.