Lillian Hellman Quotes

They're fancy talkers about themselves writers. If I had to give young writers advice I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Lillian Hellman
Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort at the least and death at the other end ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous.
Lillian Hellman
The past with its pleasures its rewards its foolishness its punishments is there for each of us forever and it should be.
Lillian Hellman
Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?
Lillian Hellman
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Lillian Hellman
It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.
Lillian Hellman
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
Lillian Hellman
Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Hellman
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
Lillian Hellman
It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.
Lillian Hellman
Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Hellman
Decisions particularly important ones have always made me sleepy perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.
Lillian Hellman
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
Lillian Hellman
Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?
Lillian Hellman
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
Lillian Hellman
If you are willing to take the punishment you're halfway through the battle. That the issues may be trivial the battle ugly is another point.
Lillian Hellman
People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman
Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Hellman
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
Lillian Hellman
Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.
Lillian Hellman
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Lillian Hellman
Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.
Lillian Hellman
I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.
Lillian Hellman
It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.
Lillian Hellman