Lillian Hellman Quotes
An American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes.
(1905 - 1984)
|
|
|
|
Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
|
|
|
|
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
[Cynicism]
|
|
|
|
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.
[Decisions]
|
|
|
|
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
|
|
|
|
God forgives those who invent what they need.
|
|
|
|
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
[Conscience]
|
|
|
|
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
[Self Control]
|
|
|
|
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
|
|
|
|
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.
|
|
|
|
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
|
|
|
|
It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
[Positive]
|
|
|
|
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
|
|
|
|
Lonely people, in talking to each other, can make each other lonelier.
|
|
|
|
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.
[War]
|
|
|
|
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
|
|
|
|
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
|
|
|
|
Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
[Acceptance]
|
|
|
|
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
|
|
|
|
|