Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)— Interview excerpt

“There is a cultivation of cruelty that has become far too dominant. The fields are full of anger and resentment and a brutal rating of talents and abilities and measures of worth. I had to tear myself away from all that, drinking the bile and nursing grudges. I came to see that nothing could be done to me if I did not allow it, and if I did not do it to myself. So a critic tells me I have not mattered. I refuse to let him force me to believe this, and I have no control over what others who hear him or read him are to think. I only have control over my mind and my blank pages. That is where reality lives for me.”–Tennessee Williams/Interview with James Grissom