Top 15 Lillian Hellman Quotes

People change and forget to tell each other.

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

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

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

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 ain't right to stand and watch them do it.

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

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

Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.