Lillian Hellman Quotes

Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.

People change and forget to tell each other.

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.

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.

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.

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

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.

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.

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.

It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.

I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

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.

The past with its pleasures its rewards its foolishness its punishments is there for each of us forever and it should be.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.

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?