Lillian Hellman - You Quotes

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

Lillian Hellman
What good is freedom if you've not got the money for it? It's all very fine to go on about Nora's escape at the end of A Doll's House but just how was she planning to eat that night?

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

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

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

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

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

Lillian Hellman
Not like the country? My. I never heard anybody say a thing like that before. It takes courage to just up and say you don't like the country. Everybody likes the country.

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

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

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