Tennessee Williams talking about "the playwright's illness"

Tennessee Williams talking about "the playwright's illness"

'Someone interviewing me asked me why writers are so preoccupied with disease and death.

"Any artist dies two deaths," I told him, "not only his own as a physical being but that of his creative power, it dies with him."

A play is submitted to so many people and to so many conditions, alterable or not, and to such bafflingly varied interpretations by those to whom it's submitted that it's a wonder the author isn't stricken with incurable vertigo and plummeted irretrievably into a pit of snakes and madness.'

"Tennessee Williams: Memoirs." Chapter 11 page 242