Lillian Hellman - People Quotes

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People change and forget to tell each other. Too bad –causes so many mistakes.

Lillian Hellman

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 it.

Lillian Hellman

History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.

Lillian Hellman

Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

Lillian Hellman

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

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

I am prepared to waive the privilege against self-incrimination and to tell you everything you wish to know about my views or actions if your committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the fifth amendment at the hearing.

Lillian Hellman

You are what you are. It is my opinion that trouble in the world comes from people who do not know what they are, and pretend to be something they're not.

Lillian Hellman

Lonely. I always thought loneliness mean alone, without people. It means something else. Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

Lillian Hellman

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

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

I think people always believe what they want to believe, don't you?

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

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

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

Lillian Hellman

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced-although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world-what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.

Lillian Hellman

Tallulah [Bankhead] was sitting in a group of people, giving the monologue she always thought was conversation.

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

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

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

Lillian Hellman

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

Lillian Hellman

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

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