Well, it's not 100% conclusive, but it appears to be from an essay he wrote that is referred to as "On a Streetcar Named Success." It appears that Williams had some negative thoughts about success. And there are versions of that differ slightly from others.
I have learned that the heart of man, his body and his brain are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict. That struggle for me is creation. Luxury is a wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the dangers lie. Without deprivation and struggle, there is no salvation and I am just a sword cutting daisies.
--Tennessee Williams
"Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.
Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict, and with the conflict removed, the man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all the little vanities and conceits and laxaties that success is heir to - security is a kind of death, I think, and can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills.
Then what is good? In the time of your life, live. That time is short and does not return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it and the monosyllable of the clock is 'loss, loss, loss' unless you devote your heart to its opposition. In the time of your life, live."
~ Tennessee Williams
http://www.summation.com/profiles/profile.asp?ID=23"Some Informal Thoughts on Success," 1947 [or "On a Streetcar Named Success"]
http://www.etsu.edu/haleyd/xch3.html"On a Streetcar Named Success."
Where I Live: Selected Essays by Tennessee WilliamsEd. Christine Day and Bob Woods. New York: New Directions, 1978
Another webpage says:
“…once you fully appreciate the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.”
- Tennessee Williams, preface to
A Streetcar Named Desirehttp://www.nysec.org/addresses/ka020203.htmlSecurity is a kind of death.
- Tennessee Williams, Esquire, September, 1971
http://www.heartsandminds.org/quotes/moreattitude.htmTennessee Williams' Comments on Success
Tennessee Williams did not find much comfort in success. It came to him at the age of thirty-four and tracked him throughout the rest of his life. Fame and fortune were burdens to him, and his outspoken views on the subject were recorded in the following:"The Catastrophe of Success": A Condensation
It was THE GLASS MENAGERIE which terminated one part of my life and began
another. Iwent from oblivion into wealth and fame-an example: a first-class Manhattan hotel instead of living in cheap rented hotel rooms. My life before was one of endurance, scratching and clawing but a "good life" because humans were created to live this way. When I had security at last I felt very depressed. I thought, "this is just a period of adjustment." I lived on hotel room service but this too was a disenchantment. I ordered a sirloin steak and chocolate sauce and poured the chocolate sauce on the steak because I thought it was gravy. I was dislocated spiritually and I even began to become indifferent to people. I got so sick of hearing people say, "I loved your play," that I couldn't say thank you anymore. I went for an operation on my eye for a cataract and once released from the hospital, I fled to Mexico and the pleasure of my natural self in obscurity. I restored myself on a lake there called Chapala and wrote A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. My view is, you should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Service is most embarrassing, nobody should have to clean up anybody else's mess in this world. You cannot say, I will now continue my life as it was before this thing. Success happened to me. But once you understand the emptiness of a life without struggle, you know, then, that the public "Somebody" you are when you "have a name" is a fiction and that the somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you - knowing this, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success.
Security is a kind of death and can come to you anywhere that is removed from the conditions that made you an artist.
"Then what is good?"
The writer William Saroyan said, "In the time of your life - live."
That purity of heart is the one success worth having.
http://www.latw.org/acrobat/glass.pdfOne morning [Alec] Baldwin, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, stood behind a podium and gave a beautiful, unadorned two-hour reading. Most of his selections derived from a book of essays by Williams entitled
Where I Live. My favorite: a piece called "
On a Streetcar Named Success." To hear Williams's eloquent ruminations on the vacuity of success in America spoken by one of Hollywood's chosen few-- this had both irony and sincerity. It was whining's finest hour.
