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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.

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
Even
Chair
Chairs
Opposites
Failure
Class
Success
True
Couch
Mean
Couches

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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.
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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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The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead.
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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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some people are democrats by choice, and some by necessity.
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Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that.
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The world is out of shapewhen there are hungry men.
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I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
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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.
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You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing.
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as one grows older, one realizes how little one knows about any relationship, or even about oneself.
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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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If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
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It {France} may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.
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failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.
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Callous greed grows pious very fast.
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Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don't get it.
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Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else.
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Unjust. How many times I've used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don't have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.
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Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.
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