Lillian Hellman Quotes - Page 4

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want.

A room of one's own isn't nearly enough. A house, or, best, an island of one's own.

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

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

It {France} may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

Styles in wit change so.

some people are democrats by choice, and some by necessity.

You can always spot clothes made in a good place.

But success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair.

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.

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

If someone had told me, don't say anything about Lillian Hellman because she'll sue you, it wouldn't have stopped me. It might have spurred me on.

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

The happy problem of our time - longer life.

Writers talk too much.

Statisticians do it with confidence, frequency and variation

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.

the convictions of Hollywood and television are made of boiled money.

People always sound so proud when they announce they know nothing of music.

The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth.

It was an unspoken pleasure, that having come together so many years, ruined so much and repaired a little, we had endured.

I don't think many writers like their best-known piece of work, particularly when it was written a long time ago.

failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.