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Nowadays people write English as if a rat were caught in the typewriter and they were trying to hit the keys which wouldn't disturb it.

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
Write
Disturb
Writing
Rats
Trying
Nowadays
People
English
Caught
Keys
Wouldn
Typewriter
Language
Typewriters

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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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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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Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that.
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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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It doesn't pay well to fight for what we believe in.
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People change and forget to tell each other.
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Callous greed grows pious very fast.
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You lose your manners when you're poor.
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Fear comes with middle age.
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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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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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For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
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Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all.
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You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing.
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Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them.
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Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else.
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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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God forgives those who invent what they need.
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Statisticians do it with confidence, frequency and variation
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