Quotes by 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.”

“I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.”

“Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.”

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

“Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it...”

“Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.”

“Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.”

“It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.”

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

“It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.”

“Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.”

“Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.”

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

“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 t...”

“God forgives those who invent what they need.”

“People change and forget to tell each other.”

“Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.”

“My father was often angry when I was most like him.”

“Nothing you write if you hope to be any good will ever come out as you first hoped.”

“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.”