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But maybe half a lie is worse than a real lie.

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
Worse
Maybe
Lying
Half
Real

More quotes by Lillian Hellman

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I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.
Lillian Hellman
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You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing.
Lillian Hellman
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People always sound so proud when they announce they know nothing of music.
Lillian Hellman
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Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do.
Lillian Hellman
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What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
Lillian Hellman
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If you are willing to take the punishment, you're halfway through the battle. That the issues may be trivial, the battle ugly, is another point.
Lillian Hellman
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The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth.
Lillian Hellman
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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.
Lillian Hellman
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Fashions in sin change.
Lillian Hellman
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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.
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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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.
Lillian Hellman
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Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them.
Lillian Hellman
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Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that.
Lillian Hellman
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It {France} may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.
Lillian Hellman
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as one grows older, one realizes how little one knows about any relationship, or even about oneself.
Lillian Hellman
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failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.
Lillian Hellman
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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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Callous greed grows pious very fast.
Lillian Hellman
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For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
Lillian Hellman