Lillian Hellman quotes - page 2

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour. (Lillian Hellman)
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. View quote
Lillian Hellman
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty. View quote
Lillian Hellman
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute. View quote
Lillian Hellman
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth. View quote
Lillian Hellman
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them. View quote
Lillian Hellman
I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself. View quote
Lillian Hellman
You lose your manners when you are poor. View quote
Lillian Hellman
Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? View quote
Lillian Hellman
We will not think noble because we are not noble. View quote
Lillian Hellman
Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. (Lillian Hellman)
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. View quote
Lillian Hellman
We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth. View quote
Lillian Hellman
Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America. View quote
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. View quote
Lillian Hellman
My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much. View quote
Lillian Hellman
Fashions in sin change. View quote
Lillian Hellman
It was an unspoken pleasure, that having come together so many years, ruined so much and repaired a little, we had endured. View quote
Lillian Hellman
It may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant. View quote
Lillian Hellman
To many intellectuals the radicals had become the chief, perhaps the only, enemy. ... Not alone because the radical's reasons were suspect but because his convictions would lead to a world that deprived the rest of us of what we had. Very few people were capable of admitting anything so simple. But the antiradical camp contained the same divisions: often they were honest and thoughtful men, often they were men who turned down a dark road for dark reasons. But radicalism or anti-radicalism should have had nothing to do with the sly, miserable methods of McCarthy, Nixon and colleagues, as they flailed at Communists, near-Communists, and nowhere-near Communists. Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? View quote
Lillian Hellman