Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
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I was blown up while we were eating cheese.
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Let’s not talk about how I am. It’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.
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It could be worse,' Passini said respectfully. "There is nothing worse than war." Defeat is worse." I do not believe it," Passini said still respectfully. "What is defeat? You go home.
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Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do.
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Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
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Wine ... offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.
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Good writing is good conversation, only more so.
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Write as well as you can and finish what you start.
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Write the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works.
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I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.
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There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
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And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.
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I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight.
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A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
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Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly.
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This is a good place," he said. "There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.
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Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
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He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.
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There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.
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How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.
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Write drunk; edit sober.
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When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.
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Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.