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Home
Authors
Lillian Hellman
American
Dramatist
About the author
There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Bible
#Earth
Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Success
#Man
People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Forget
#Change
You lose your manners when you are poor.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Poor
#Manners
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Saying
#Truth
#Cynicism
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Injustice
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Father
Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Belief
#Act
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,
American
Dramatist
#Failure
#Writing
#Theater
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#God
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Will
#Fashion
#Conscience
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Strength
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Writing
#Writers
#Talking
#Advice
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.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Will
#Problems
#End
#Man
#Tragedy
#Beginning
#Gods
#Mercy
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Famous
Lonely people, in talking to each other, can make each other lonelier.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
#Talking
#Lonely
It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Right
#Act
#Confidence
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#People
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Baby
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Hope
#Will
#Nothing
#First
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Books
#Word
#Truth
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.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Want
#People
#Past
#Mistakes
#America
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,
American
Dramatist
#Now
#Hell
#Word
#Justice
#Courage
Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#Time
#Truth
Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.
Lillian Hellman,
American
Dramatist
#End
#Habits
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,
American
Dramatist
#Writing
#Writers
#Talking
#Advice
#Fancy