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.
Lillian HellmanDecision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.
Lillian HellmanThe past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.
Lillian HellmanChildhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become.
Lillian Hellman