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Authors & Writing
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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.
-Lillian Hellman
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If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
-Lillian Hellman
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Desires
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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.
-Lillian Hellman
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Equality
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Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
-Lillian Hellman, (attributed)
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Fame
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It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
-Lillian Hellman
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Fashion
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I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions
-Lillian Hellman, Letter to House Un-American Activities Committee, May 19, 1952
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Gossip
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It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.
-Lillian Hellman, Watch on the Rhine, act 2 character Sara Muller
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Guilt
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For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
-Lillian Hellman, The Watch on the Rhine, 1941
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Intelligence
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Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.
-Lillian Hellman
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Poverty
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You lose your manners when you're poor.
-Lillian Hellman
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Success & Failure
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Was it always in my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success becomes an accident and failure seemed the only truth?
-Lillian Hellman
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Books by and about Lillian Hellman