Lillian Hellman Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

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

Lillian Hellman
The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.

Lillian Hellman
It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

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

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

Lillian Hellman
I think we should not try so hard to talk. Sometimes it is wise to let things grow more roots before one blows them away with words.

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

Lillian Hellman
Is it age, or was it always my nature, to take a bad time, block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only 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
The convictions of Hollywood and television are made of boiled money.

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

Lillian Hellman
I am most willing to answer all questions about myself... But... I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive.

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

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

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
Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier. They should be careful because lonely people can't afford to cry.

Lillian Hellman
I am suspicious of guilt in myself and other people: it is usually a way of not thinking, or of announcing one's own fine sensibilities the better to be rid of them fast.

Lillian Hellman
In the end, they were together for the best of all possible reasons: the sheer pleasure of each other's company.

Lillian Hellman
Success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair.

Lillian Hellman
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour: what worked once must always work.

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
You're a toucher: you constantly touch people or lean on them. Little moments of sensuality. One should have sensuality whole or not at all. Don't you find pecking at it ungratifying? There are many of you: the touchers and the leaners.

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

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

Lillian Hellman