Quote #15

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

More from Lillian Hellman

  1. Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
  2. If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. …
  3. Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and t…
  4. Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling class…
  5. Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
  6. It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
  7. Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original l…
  8. It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.

All Lillian Hellman quotes