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
Guilt is often an excuse for not thinking ...
I am suspicious of guilt in myself and in other people; it is usually a way of not thinking, or of announcing one's own fine sensibilities the better to be rid of them fast.
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.
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.
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.
Don't you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them?
I don't think many writers like their best-known piece of work, particularly when it was written a long time ago.
We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth.
History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.
It may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant
Tallulah was sitting in a group of people, giving the monologue she always thought was conversation.
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
You lose your manners when you are poor