June 18, 2016

GEORGE ORWELL (1903-1950), 20TH CENTURY BRITISH WRITER


“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm


“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“All men are enemies. All animals are comrades”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Four legs good, two legs better! All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“The only good human being is a dead one.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

 “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
~ George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

 “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
~ George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
~ George Orwell

 “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.”
~ George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”
~ George Orwell, Why I Write

“Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

June 9, 2016

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911-1983), AN INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT


 “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.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

 “There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
~ Tennessee Williams

“How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

 “I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”
~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 “When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

 “Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”
~ Tennessee Williams

“Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

 “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...”
~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 “Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“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--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. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

 “Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

 “Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 “He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

 “Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“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, The Glass Menagerie

 “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, The Glass Menagerie

 “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?”
~ Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending

 “In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 “All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

 “Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

 “Everybody is nothing until you love them.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

 “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.”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

 “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, The Glass Menagerie

 “I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”
~ Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth

 “Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”
~ Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”
~ Tennessee Williams


June 3, 2016

Tennessee Williams

Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, noted chiefly for his classic plays such as, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)

Profile

  • Full Name: Tennessee Williams
  • Birth Name: Thomas Lanier Williams III
  • Date of Birth: March 26, 1911
  • Place of Birth: Columbus, Mississippi, United States
  • Zodiac Sign: Aries
  • Nationality: American
  • Death: February 25, 1983
  • Place of Death: New York City, New York, United States
  • Epitaph: “The violets in the mountain have broken the rocks.”
  • Cause of Death: Choking
  • Place of Burial: Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
  • Father: Cornelius Coffin Williams (1879-1957)
  • Mother: Edwina Estelle Dakin Williams (1884-1980)
  • Siblings:
1. Sister- Rose Isabel Williams (1909-1996)
2. Brother- Walter Dakin Williams (1919-2008)
  • Partner: Frank Merlo  (1922–1963)
  • Children: None
  • Alma Mater: Soldan High School, University City High School, University of Iowa, University of Missouri
  • Known for: his distinct variety of emotional realism
  • Criticized for: openly addressing taboo topics in his plays
  • Influences: William Shakespeare (1564 –1616), Emily Dickinson (1830 –1886), August Strindberg (1849 –1912), Arthur Rimbaud (1854 –1891), Anton Chekhov (1860 –1904), James Joyce (1882 –1941), D. H. Lawrence (1885 –1930), Eugene O’Neill (1888 –1953), William Faulkner (1897–1962), Hart Crane (1899 –1932), Ernest Hemingway (1899 –1961), Thomas Wolfe (1900 –1938), and William Inge (1913–1973)
  • Influenced: John Waters (1946), David Mamet (1947), Tony Kushner (1956), and Suzan-Lori Parks (1963)

Awards

  1. Group Theatre Prize (1939)
  2. Rockefeller Grant (1939)
  3. Sidney Howard Memorial Award, The Glass Menagerie (1945)
  4. Donaldson Award, The Glass Menagerie (1945)
  5. New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, The Glass Menagerie (1945)
  6. New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)
  7. Donaldson Award, A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)
  8. Pulitzer Prize, A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)
  9. Tony Award, The Rose Tattoo (1952)
  10. Pulitzer Prize, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
  11. Tony Award, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
  12. New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, The Night of the Iguana (1961)
  13. Tony Award, The Night of the Iguana (1961)
  14. Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980)

Quotes

“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.” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Major Themes

  • Psychological and Spiritual Displacement
  • Loss of Connections
  • Loneliness
  • Self Deception
  • Retrogression into Sexual Hedonism

Notable Works

  • Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay (1937)
  • Candles to the Sun (1937)
  • The Fugitive Kind (1937)
  • Battle of Angels (1940)
  • The Glass Menagerie (1944)
  • A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
  • Summer and Smoke (1948)
  • The Rose Tattoo (1951)
  • Camino Real (1953)
  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
  • Baby Doll (1956, screenplay)
  • Orpheus Descending (1957)
  • Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
  • Period of Adjustment (1960)
  • The Night of the Iguana (1961)
  • The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
  • The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968)
  • Out Cry (1973)
  • The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976)
  • Vieux Carré (1977)
  • Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)

Did You Know?

  • Tennessee Williams was the second child of Cornelius Coffin Williams and Edwina Estelle Dakin Williams.
  • His father was an alcoholic travelling shoe salesman.
  • In the year 1939 Williams started using the name Tennessee Williams instead of his given name.
  • Throughout his life Williams remained close to his sister Rose who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman.
  • During her teenage Rose foolishly fell in love with a boy, to whom Williams was attracted as well.
  • His unfavourable childhood and personal experience provided much idea for his theme and character development.
  • Williams was an alcoholic and often sought comfort in pills.
  • Before accepting homosexuality Williams made several attempts to form relationship with women.
  • Soon after A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) opened, Williams lost his confidence in writing and travelled Europe to recover from his loss. During this unproductive period he heavily relied upon alcohol, pills and casual gay sex.
  • Having returned from Europe he re-encountered Frank Merlo, a truck driver, who he met one year back. Later on, the pair fell in love and Merlo moved in with Williams. Merlo cleaned the apartment, cooked all the meals, acted as chauffeur and managed correspondence. Merlo gradually detached Williams from dependence on alcohol, casual sex and pills. As a result, Williams once again found the peace of mind to concentrate in writing.
  • Since Williams couldn’t keep himself aloof from sex and alcoholism, cracks began to develop in their enduring relationship. Consequently, Merlo and Williams separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962.
  • Shortly after their breakup, Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and Williams returned to take care of him until his death.
  • Grief-stricken by Merlo’s demise, William fell into a seven-year period of depression, promiscuous sex, alcohol abuse and drug use. Consequently, his subsequent plays became mediocre and were not even close to the quality of his earlier works. In 1969, he had a nervous breakdown and his brother Dakin had him committed to a mental hospital in St. Louis, where Williams stayed for three months.
  • In 1975 Williams published Memoirs, in which he wrote candidly about his addictions, family crises, and homosexuality.
  • Tennessee Williams was the first American playwright to frankly incorporate the idea of homosexuality in plays when none could even dare to imagine it.

Pictures

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams




References

" Tennessee Williams.” Shmoop. 2016. Shmoop University Inc. 20 May 2016
< http://www.shmoop.com/tennessee-williams/>.

" Tennessee Williams.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 20 May 2016
< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams>.



NB: This article was last updated on January 28, 2018

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