Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.
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Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.
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The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
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Let him think is I am more man than I am and I will be so.
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Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.
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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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I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.
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If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.
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Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.
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When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it.
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Man is not made for defeat.
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I am so in love with you that there isn’t anything else.
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No; that doesn't interest me.' 'That's because you never read a book about it.
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Wars are caused by undefended wealth.
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The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do - and makes you what you are - is to back up into the grave.
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All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.
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Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more.
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Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.
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Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.
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There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.
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So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
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A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.
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Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.
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Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.