Lillian Hellman Quotes: top 81 famous quotes about Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Lillian Hellman quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Guilt is often an excuse for not thinking ... — Lillian Hellman

You don't always know how to do things when they're happening. — Lillian Hellman

Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
(on Lillian Hellman) — Mary McCarthy

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. — Lillian Hellman

Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight. — Lillian Hellman

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

I'm good at embroidery. It's what I always wanted to do ... Yep, instead of whoring, I just wanted to do fancy embroidery. — 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. — Lillian Hellman

The convictions of Hollywood and television are made of boiled money. — Lillian Hellman

It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute. — Lillian Hellman

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty. — Lillian Hellman

A room of one's own isn't nearly enough. A house, or, best, an island of one's own. — Lillian Hellman

The happy problem of our time - longer life. — Lillian Hellman

Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? — Lillian Hellman

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits. — Lillian Hellman

Writers talk too much. — Lillian Hellman

We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end. — Lillian Hellman

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant. — Lillian Hellman

You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing. — Lillian Hellman

What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth. — Lillian Hellman

Lonely people, in talking to each other, can make each other lonelier. — Lillian Hellman

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all. — Lillian Hellman

One sits uncomfortably on a too comfortable cushion. — Lillian Hellman

But maybe half a lie is worse than a real lie. — Lillian Hellman

Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that. — Lillian Hellman

You can't recover from what you do not understand. — Lillian Hellman

The world is out of shapewhen there are hungry men. — Lillian Hellman

It doesn't pay well to fight for what we believe in. — Lillian Hellman

Statisticians do it with confidence, frequency and variation — Lillian Hellman

Mama seemed to do only what my father wanted, and yet we lived the way my mother wanted us to live. — Lillian Hellman

Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do. — Lillian Hellman

How often the rich like to play at being poor. A rather nasty game, I've always thought. — Lillian Hellman

People change and forget to tell each other. — Lillian Hellman

My father was often angry when I was most like him. — Lillian Hellman

You can always spot clothes made in a good place. — Lillian Hellman

I wanted Lillian Hellman to be perfect because I wasn't perfect myself. I really wanted a mentor. — Rosemary Mahoney

As one grows older, one realizes how little one knows about any relationship, or even about oneself. — Lillian Hellman

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

Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book. — Lillian Hellman

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. — Lillian Hellman

The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead. — Lillian Hellman

People always sound so proud when they announce they know nothing of music. — Lillian Hellman

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

Success and failure are not true op-posites and they're not even in the same class; they're not even a couch and a chair. — Lillian Hellman

Fear comes with middle age. — Lillian Hellman

Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault? — Lillian Hellman

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels. — Lillian Hellman

The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth. — Lillian Hellman

Failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field. — Lillian Hellman

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create. — Lillian Hellman

Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want. — Lillian Hellman

You lose your manners when you're poor. — Lillian Hellman

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. — Lillian Hellman

I live in a room and I go to work and I play a game called getting through the day while you wait for the night. — Lillian Hellman

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt. — Lillian Hellman

You lose your manners when you are poor. — Lillian Hellman

I don't think many writers like their best-known piece of work, particularly when it was written a long time ago. — Lillian Hellman

No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes. — Lillian Hellman

My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much. — Lillian Hellman

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour. — Lillian Hellman

Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible. — Lillian Hellman

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did. — Lillian Hellman

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

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

Freedom costs you a great deal. — Lillian Hellman

If someone had told me, don't say anything about Lillian Hellman because she'll sue you, it wouldn't have stopped me. It might have spurred me on. — Lillian Hellman

I don't need to be married to Georgia O'Keeffe or Lillian Hellman, but I like being with a woman I can look up to. — Alec Baldwin

A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young. — Lillian Hellman

God forgives those who invent what they need. — Lillian Hellman

Nowadays people write English as if a rat were caught in the typewriter and they were trying to hit the keys which wouldn't disturb it. — Lillian Hellman

Callous greed grows pious very fast. — Lillian Hellman

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

Don't you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them? — Lillian Hellman

It was an unspoken pleasure, that having come together so many years, ruined so much and repaired a little, we had endured. — Lillian Hellman

Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them. — Lillian Hellman

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? — Lillian Hellman

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped. — Lillian Hellman

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. — Lillian Hellman

Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else. — Lillian Hellman

Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. — Lillian Hellman

Some people are democrats by choice, and some by necessity. — Lillian Hellman