Childhood 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 rears 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.


I think I have always known about my memory.

I know when it is to be trusted and when some dream of fantasy entered on the life, and the dream,

the need of dream, led to distortion of what happend.

And so I knew early that the rampage angers of an only child were distorted nightmares of reality.

But I trust absolutely what I remember about Julia.


Lillian Hellman (1905-1984)
Julia