Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Quotes

I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

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...

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.

Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?

I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie)

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.

Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you--gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--and I can! I'm determined to do it--and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof--is there?

My only point, the only point that I'm making, is life has got to be allowed to continue even after the dream of life is--all--over....

It's like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there's peace.

Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one that you love doesn't love you.

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.

Of course you always had that detached quality as if you were playing a game without much concern over whether you won or lost, and now that you've lost the game, not lost but just quit playing, you have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or hopelessly sick people, the charm of the defeated.

No, truth is something desperate, an' she's got it. Believe me, it's something desperate, an' she's got it.

A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young and believing

How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?

I’m not good. I don’t know why people have to pretend to be good, nobody’s good.

Laws of silence don't work.... When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant....

human beings dream of life everlasting, that's the reason! But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven.

--- 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 ... [More croquet sounds] Later tonight I'm going to tell you I love you an' maybe by that time you'll be drunk enough to believe me. Yes, they're playing croquet ... Big Daddy is dying of cancer ... What were you thinking of when I caught you looking at me like that? Were you thinking of Skipper? [Brick crosses to the bar, takes a quick drink, and rubs his head with a towel] Laws of silence don't work ... When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant .... Get dressed, Brick.

And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into...

The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting!--Which it never can be....

What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death. —Big Daddy

We mustn't scream at each other, the walls in this house have ears...

Big Daddy: Ignorance - of mortality - is a comfort.

Margaret: Oh you weak people, you weak, beautiful people! - who give up. What you want is someone to [she turns out the rose-silk lamp] take hold of you. Gently, gently, with love! And I do love you, Brick, I do! Brick [smiling with charming sadness]: Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?

You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!--and death was the only icebox where you could keep it....

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...

Big Daddy: What makes you so restless, have you got ants in your britches? Brick: Yes, sir... Big Daddy: Why? Brick: - Something - Hasn't - Happened... Big Daddy: Yeah? What is that? Brick [sadly]: - the click... Big Daddy: Did you say the click? Brick: Yes, click. Big Daddy: What click? Brick: A click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful Big Daddy: I sure in hell don't know what you're talking about, but it disturbs me. Brick: It's just a mechanical thing. Big Daddy: What is a mechanical thing? Brick: This click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful. I got to drink till I get it.

You can be young without money but you can't be old without it. You've got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you've got to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can't be old and without it. - That's the truth, Brick...

I know! WHY! – Am I so catty? – Cause I’m consumed with envy an’ eaten up with longing? –

My head don't work any more and it's hard for me to understand how anybody could care if he lived or died or was dying or cared about anything but whether or not there was liquor left in the bottle and so I said what I said without thinking. In some ways I'm no better than the others, in some ways worse because I'm less alive. Maybe it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive that makes me sort of accidentally truthful--I don't know but--anyway--we've been friends...And being friends is telling each other the truth...

When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...

Laws of silence don’t work…. When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don’t work, it’s just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.

I'm a rich man, Brick, yep, I'm a mighty rich man. Y'know how much I'm worth? Guess, Brick! Guess how much I'm worth! Close to ten million in cash an' blue chip stocks, outside, mind you, of twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile! But a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life with it when his life has been spent, that's one thing not offered in the Europe fire-sale or in the American markets or any markets on earth, a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life when his life is finished... Big Daddy: (pp. 65)

That Europe is nothin' on earth but a great big auction, that's all it is, that bunch of old worn-out places, it's just a big fire-sale, the whole rutten thing.

BRICK [to the moon]: I envy you--you cool son of a bitch.

Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts. Long after the euphoria from meth is no longer attainable—Tennessee Williams described the equivalent with alcohol in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “I never again could get the click”—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don’t sleep, either.

Sevdiğin biriyle birlikte yaşamak daha da büyük yalnızlık… tamamen yalnız kalmaktan daha büyük yalnızlık! Eğer sevdiğin kişi seni sevmiyorsa…

My only point, the only point that I'm making, is life has to be allowed to continue even after the dream of life is - all over...

Ignorance - of mortality - is a comfort. A man don't have that comfort, he's the only living thing that conceives of death, that knows what it is.

My pet-sitting day ends around sunset, and it's very satisfying to know that I've made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined, and played with them until all our hearts were beating faster. That I kissed them goodbye and left them with their tails wagging or flipping or at least raised in a happy kind of way. That's a heck of a lot more than any president, pope, prime minister, or potentate can say, and I wouldn't switch places with any of them.

I pulled the dress out of the bag and held it in front of me. Ella sat up straighter and squinted her eyes, while Michael and Paco made the noises men make when a woman says, “What do you think?” Fathers probably teach those noises to their sons when they’re young—“Stand up when you’re introduced to a lady, use your napkin instead of your sleeve, and make admiring noises when a woman shows you anything, no matter what it is, and asks you what you think about it. Never, never, never say you have no opinion.

Families always want a lot of babies, especially boys, to carry on the name, and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it was also about money. Maggie hadn’t had any kids yet, so everyone thought something was wrong with her. Women have to have a lot of babies to be worth anything.

You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it. Isn't that right? Never had any anxiety about it, did it naturally, easily, slowly, with absolute confidence and perfect calm, more like opening a door for a lady or seating her at a table than giving expression to any longing for her. Your indifference made you wonderful at lovemaking - strange? - but true...

In this way, I destroyed him, by telling him truth that he and his world which he was born and raised in, yours and his world, had told him could not be told?

Living with someone you love can be lonelier — than living entirely alone — if the one that y' love doesn't love you.

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others.

- You know what I like to hear the most? - What? - Solid quiet. Perfect unbroken quiet.

- Well, they say nature hates a vacuum. - That's what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

You were a wonderful lover.... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it.

Suskunluğun yasaları işlemiyor. Belleğinde ya da imgeleminde üreyip duran bir şeyler varsa suskunluğun yasaları işlemiyor, tıpkı bir kapıyı kapamak, yanmakta olan bir evin yandığını unutmak için anahtarı kilitte döndürmek gibi bir şey bu. Ama yangınla yüzleşmemek yangını söndürmüyor ki. Bir konuda susmak o konunun boyutlarını büyütüyor sadece. Suskunlukta büyüyor, ürüyor o şey, kötücül oluyor…

BRICK: Well, they say nature hates a vacuum, Big Daddy. BIG DADDY: That's what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Desconocer la muerte da tranquilidad. El hombre no goza de esa tranquilidad, es el único ser viviente que sabe que va a morir, y que sabe en qué consiste la muerte. Los otros seres no, y así deberían vivir todos, sin saberlo, sin tener la más remota idea.

In some ways I'm no better than the others, in some ways I'm worse because I'm less alive. Maybe it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthful - I don't know but - anyway - we've been friends... - And being friends is telling each other the truth...

Tú siempre has tenido ese carácter distante, como si participaras en un juego en el que no te importa demasiado ganar o perder, y ahora has perdido, más que perdido has abandonado el juego, posees ese extraño encanto que normalmente sólo se da en personas muy ancianas o en enfermos desahuciados. El encanto de los derrotados. Pareces tan frío, tan frío, tan envidiablemente frío.

Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent - fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.

March 24: With Milton and Amy Greene, Marilyn attends the opening of a new Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, at the Morosco Theatre in New York City. Afterwards, they dine at the El Morocco.

Southern Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Sure nuff, I'm happier than a cat on a formerly hot tin roof which now uses NXT Cool Zone® heat reflecting roof coating ~ but I'm still ornier than a mule on loco weed and a whole lot hornier than a two-dicked billy goat. You gots any coatin' for dat?

Both the lady and Nina looked at Clare, who was, Nina realized, wearing Peppa Pig pajamas with a long pink slip over the top. The kind of slip Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; the kind with lacy bits and straps. “And very nice you look, too,” said another woman, who looked vaguely familiar. “I bet that’s your favorite dress.” “It is,” beamed Clare, glad someone was on the ball this evening. She turned back to Nina. “These are the Franceseses.” She stumbled over the pronunciation, and tried again.

... you don't look like a Lucian." "Really." It was kind of fun needling him. He fell for it so easily. "Lucian wears white linen and loafers. Offers you a mint julep before selling you an antique chifforobe." "He sounds like a hoot. Tell me---what should my name be, then?" "You're more of a Brick. Surly ex-star athlete with a big chip on his shoulder who hides from the world and drinks away his pain." He blinked again, his head jerking just the slightest bit, as though I'd landed a direct hit. Then again, maybe I'd imagined that, because he merely gave me another bland look, and that lovely hot-cream voice rolled out in the same insolent drawl. "As much as I'd love to hear more of this Cat on a Hot Tin Roof revival you've got planned, Maggie, the bags are coming out." Flames licked over my cheeks. God, he had my number.

He scrambled up the ladder and was back down in a time that would have impressed a cat being bathed in a tub of water on a hot tin roof.