Lillian Hellman Quotes

People change and forget to tell each other.

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

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.

Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don't get it.

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

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

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

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.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead.

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

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.

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

You can't recover from what you do not understand.

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

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Fashions in sin change.

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

Guilt is often an excuse for not thinking.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.

Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all.

Nowadays people write English as if a rat were caught in the typewriter and they were trying to hit the keys which wouldn't disturb it.

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.

Freedom costs you a great deal.