Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it.
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Just as, with the radio, there are certain things that you become fond of,and you welcome them and resent the new things
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The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.
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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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Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.
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If every one said orders were impossible to carry out when they were received where would you be? Where would we all be if you just said, "Impossible," when orders came?
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you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
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In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
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And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.' 'What did you say?' 'I said we could have everything.' 'We can have everything.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can have the whole world.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can go everywhere.' 'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.' 'It's ours.' 'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.
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Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.
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I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me.
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If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.
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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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I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I wouldn't kill myself. When a man is in rebellion against death, as I am in rebellion against death, he gets pleasure out of taking to himself one of the godlike attributes; that of giving it.
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Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.
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I drink to make other people more interesting.
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If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything?
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But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
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One cat just leads to another. The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time.
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Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.
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I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.
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The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.
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I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
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Before we take to the sea, we walk on land. . . Before we create, we must understand. . .