Ernest Hemingway Quotes
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Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?
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(World War I) was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.
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Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.
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You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?
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You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice.
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My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.
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That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
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I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time.
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There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
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If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
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People fall in love, but have to climb out.
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Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
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It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.
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It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.
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Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.
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I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.
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Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.
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I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
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I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.
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The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.
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Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
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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 severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can believe.
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There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.