Lillian Hellman

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

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

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.

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

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

God forgives those who invent what they need.

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 to hell with justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

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.

Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort at the least and death at the other end ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous.

The past with its pleasures its rewards its foolishness its punishments is there for each of us forever and it should be.