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There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.
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I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day.
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I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.
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The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
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No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
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People fall in love, but have to climb out.
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When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
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Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?
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Life is the best left hooker I ever saw, although some say it was Charlie White of Chicago
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Never confuse motions with action.
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You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
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You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.
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Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you quit, try.
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Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.
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There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
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Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.
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You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?
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What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure.
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I am always in love.
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If a writer stops observing, he is finished.
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The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there.
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Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.
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The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.
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You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother.