Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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Always quit for the day when you know what you want to do next.
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A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.
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Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you quit, try.
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Scott Fitzgerald was mortally afraid of lightning.
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Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.
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For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.
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I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.
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I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it?
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He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.
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I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.
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If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
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Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?
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The world breaks everyone or nearly everyone, of their childish illusions, assumptions and wishes, often painfully and afterwards due to the personal growth in practical experience, insight and the resulting wisdom many are strong at the broken places just like mended broken bones often are, and some people even have the great insight to be grateful for the purifying fire.
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The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
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In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.
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Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.
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The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.
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Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.
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If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.
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You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
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It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I am not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't.
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There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
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People fall in love, but have to climb out.
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I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation.