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

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

— Lillian Hellman

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

— Lillian Hellman

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

— Lillian Hellman

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

— Lillian Hellman

You lose your manners when you're poor.

— Lillian Hellman

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

— Lillian Hellman

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

— Lillian Hellman

Was it always in my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success becomes an accident and failure seemed the only truth?

— Lillian Hellman

Nobody knows what you want except you. And nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. Wanting some other way to live is proof enough of deserving it. Having it is hard work, but not having it is sheer hell.

— Lillian Hellman

People change and forget to tell each other.

— Lillian Hellman

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

— Lillian Hellman

Well, 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