June 20

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

- Lillian Hellman

"I am a writer," Lillian Hellman said in the 1940s. "I want to be quite sure that I can continue to be a writer . . . without being branded by the malice of people who make a living by that malice." Always a writer of strong conscience and conviction, Hellman (1905-1984) was never far from controversy. One of her best plays, Watch on the Rhine (1941), was a potent anti-Nazi statement. During the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s Hellman refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities committee, saying she would not "cut her conscience to fit this year's fashion."