1
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
2
I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.Lillian Hellman
3
Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.Lillian Hellman
4
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.Lillian Hellman
5
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
6
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.Lillian Hellman
7
Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.Lillian Hellman
8
People change and forget to tell each other.Lillian Hellman
9
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
10
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.Lillian Hellman
11
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
12
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
13
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.Lillian Hellman
14
It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.Lillian Hellman
15
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.Lillian Hellman
16
The past with its pleasures its rewards its foolishness its punishments is there for each of us forever and it should be.Lillian Hellman
17
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
18
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
19
Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.Lillian Hellman
20
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.Lillian Hellman
21
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.Lillian Hellman
22
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.Lillian Hellman
23
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.Lillian Hellman
24
It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.Lillian Hellman
25
Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.Lillian Hellman
26
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.Lillian Hellman
27
Unjust. How many times I've used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don't have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.Lillian Hellman
28
Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.Lillian Hellman
29
My father was often angry when I was most like him.Lillian Hellman