Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.
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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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The best way to become a writer is to go off and write.
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Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
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We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance
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He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone
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Easy writing makes hard reading.
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People fall in love, but have to climb out.
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But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.
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The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
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When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.
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When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
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There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
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Never confuse movement with action.
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You're beautiful, like a May fly.
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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 was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.
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Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
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But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
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It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.
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As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
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How little we know of what there is to know.
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It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
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I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.