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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.