Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.
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You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.
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The writer's job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.
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It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.
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You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.
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Tell me some true things about fighting.''Tell me you love me.''I love you,' the girl said. 'You can publish it in the Gazzettino if you like. I love your hard, flat body and your strange eyes that frighten me when they become wicked. I love your hand and all your other wounded places.
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There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing.
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All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
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Everyone has his own conscience, and there should be no rules about how a conscience should function.
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If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.
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First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.
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Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death.
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Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about.
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When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.
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He's a great writer. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party. But you can't kill the guy. He's not human.
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There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning. Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill. Night life goes round and round and you look at the wall to make it stop. Night life comes out of a bottle and goes into a jar. If you think how much are the drinks it is not night life.
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You're awfully dark, brother," he said. "You don't know how dark.
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Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.
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Never mistake motion for action.
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Ascensions into heaven are like falling leaves sad and happy all at the same time Going away isn't really sad especially when your going enables a new kind of presence to be born.
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But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
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Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.
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But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope).
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To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me.