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
No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes.
Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else.
Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.
The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.
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.
Old paint on 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.
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.
Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.
Childhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become.
The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead.
You can always spot clothes made in a good place.
Don't you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them?