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Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

Lillian Hellman

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Lillian Hellman
Age: 79 †
Born: 1905
Born: June 20
Died: 1984
Died: September 30
Actor
Author
Autobiographer
Librettist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Lillian Florence Hellman
Feel
Uglier
Feels
Costs
Writing
Dramatic
Much
Guilty
Theater
Failure
Cost
Form

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What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
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The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead.
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the convictions of Hollywood and television are made of boiled money.
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Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
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Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
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Guilt is often an excuse for not thinking.
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The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth.
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failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.
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It {France} may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.
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No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes.
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For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
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You can always spot clothes made in a good place.
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People always sound so proud when they announce they know nothing of music.
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Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault?
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People change and forget to tell each other.
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But success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair.
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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 19th-century France and England, or 20th-century Russia and America.
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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.
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The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.
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Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else.
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