Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence "Lilly" Hellmanwas an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism. She famously was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activitiesat the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a precipitous decline in her income during which time she had to work outside her chosen...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth20 June 1905
CountryUnited States of America
Fear comes with middle age.
We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end.
Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in 19th-century France and England, or 20th-century Russia and America.
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.
Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.
Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.
Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
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.
Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.
I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.