-
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.
-
My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.
-
The best way to become a writer is to go off and write.
-
There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.
-
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.
-
He remembered poor Julian [actually F. Scott Fitzgerald] and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."
-
When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
-
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.
-
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
-
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
-
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.
-
I used to play cello. My mother kept me out of school a whole year to study music and counterpoint. She thought I had ability, but I was absolutely without talent.
-
I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.
-
When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
-
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.
-
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
-
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?
-
My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.
-
I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.
-
A writer is like a gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like any government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.
-
I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be
-
Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey
-
A severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can believe.
-
it wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.