Person-to-Person

It is well not to content yourself with a demand for attention, to know out of your personal lyricism, your sidewalk histrionics, something has to be created that will not only attract observers but participants in the performance. 

I try very hard to do that. 

I still find it somehow easier to 'level with' crowds of strangers in the hushed twilight of orchestra and balcony sections of theatre then with individuals across a table from me. Their being strangers somehow makes them more familiar and more approachable, easier to talk to. 

Of course I know that I have sometimes presumed too much upon corresponding sympathies and interest in those to whom I talk boldly, and this had led to rejections that were painful and costly enough to inspire more prudence. But when I weigh one thing against another, an easy liking against a hard respect, that balance always tips the same way, and whatever the risk of being turned a cold shoulder, I still don't want to talk to people only about the surface aspects of their lives, the sort of things that acquaintances laugh and chatter about on ordinary social occasions. 

I feel they get plenty of that, and heaven knows so do I, before and after the littler interval of time in which I have their attention to say what I have to say to them. 

Tennessee Williams