Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me.
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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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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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I don't think I ever owned twenty pencils at one time. Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.
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No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things
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Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
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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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For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
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If my Valentine you won't be, I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.
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Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.
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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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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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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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All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
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Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.
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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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Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.
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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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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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But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
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I drink to make other people more interesting.
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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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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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Anyone can be a fisherman in May.