if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it.
Ernest Hemingway
Related When I was excited about life, I didn't want to write at all. I've never written when I was happy. I... JEAN RHYS The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a da... MAEVE BINCHY You should not do an autobiography if you want to tell the truth. There are a lot of things I know a... ABRAHAM A. RIBICOFF Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do. If you want to write, write about something you k... JACKIE COLLINS To write is to reveal oneself. When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect ... SANHITA BARUAH If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is tru... GORDON ATKINSON I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important t... JERRY SPINELLI One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing... HUNTER S. THOMPSON For all those worried about money; I write love notes to my kids all the time; only thing is they wi... JEFFREY LEE GIBSON JR. I'm not comparing myself at all to him, but I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote a... IMELDA MAY One thing which I know about this world of glamour is that it is better to have people talking about... SONAKSHI SINHA Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write... MICHAEL MORPURGO You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you w... ERNEST HEMINGWAY We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chap... LYNDON B. JOHNSON I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do... MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM It's really hard when people write nasty things about you all the time. As much as good things a... JORDIN SPARKS The willingness to keep learning is, I think, the most important thing about trying to be good at an... EMILE HIRSCH I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity ... KRISTIN ARMSTRONG Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writi... MEG CABOT Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scen... LAINI TAYLOR I mean, what can you say about how you write your books? What I mean is, first you've got to ... AGATHA CHRISTIE You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I ador... OSCAR WILDE I am very happy about it and excited about it. I am glad we were able to get it worked out. I think ... BRAD BROWNELL You will know it is love not when you think about them all the time or want to be with them, but whe... SHANNON L. ALDER I can't make a comment on something I don't know about. This pub is the hub. If you don't hear about... JOE HARTMAN I told the guys (other assistants), 'If you think of something, write it down, because I'm not going... NORM CHOW I will tell the players, as I've told the coaches, there will be no more questions about it, there w... BILL COWHER One of the most interesting parts of writing is that you can think about it all of the time. Writers... EDGARDO H. PANGILINAN Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. Wh... MARCEL PROUST Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it... MEG CABOT When you give, you will be blessed. When you give, it will be given back to you. CRAIG GROESCHEL Sometimes, I feel able to write lines about my life and about how I do feel everyday in such a huge ... SARAH KEDDAR To be honest with you, I don't male-bash. I don't believe in male-bashing. I write about thi... CHERRELLE But I had to kill you, because the only other possible ending was us doing it, which I wasn't really... JOHN GREEN You won't be able to do it wrong, Durnik--any more than you'd be able to lie or cheat or steal. It's... DAVID EDDINGS The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to b... KELSEA BALLERINI D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn't know w... J.D. SALINGER It was about things he had always wanted to write about, but was never quite able to. BRUCE JACKSON If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes abo... CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is... PLINY THE YOUNGER I write about personal experiences. I write about things that have happened to me and the people aro... JAMES BAY I think it's something you have to review. There are a lot of things, which I don't know anything ab... JACKIE HENDRIKS If you truly believe in something, that is, if you care enough about it to not just dream about it, ... CORY GROSHEK I don't know about you, but the first thing I do when I'm supposed to write something, ... is to do ... DAVE GORMAN I would not want to write something about something I do not think about. GEEZER BUTLER Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter ... DAVID LEVITHAN Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult....Examine your words well, and you will find that even whe... GEORGE ELIOT I'm not, you know, Ronald McDonald opening up this Kmart or something. Rather than asking me for my ... QUENTIN TARANTINO I'm not, you know, Ronald McDonald opening up this Kmart or something, ... Rather than asking me for... QUENTIN TARANTINO There are two good rules which ought to be written on every heart; never to believe anything bad abo... HENRY VAN DYKE When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins, as... JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech th... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care... QUEEN LATIFAH I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you... ERNEST HEMINGWAY In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you d... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when ... TODD PHILLIPS There are two good rules which ought to be written on every heart - never to believe anything bad ab... HENRY VAN DYKE There are two good rules which ought to be written on every heart - never to believe anything bad ab... HENRY VAN DYKE I have a deep feeling for Kashmir, and I just had to write this book, ... [But] it's very hard to wr... SALMAN RUSHDIE Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to w... KAZUO ISHIGURO All of it made me think about this book I want to write. It's about greed. JOHN DENSMORE Where and what are Helm’s Deep and all the rest of it?” said Merry. “I don’t know anything a... J.R.R. TOLKIEN The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make ... RANDALL MUNROE You're not going to say anything about me that I'm not going to say about myself. There'... EMINEM If you want something bad enough if you really want it bad enough if you work for it long enough bel... LISA ADAMS I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes... LORD BRABAZON I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes... LORD BRABAZON Don't keep forever on the public road,going only where others have gone, and following one after the... ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summe... DONALD MILLER You know that I had heard so many times people say things like, 'You could never write 'Harr... CASSANDRA CLARE The thing was always, as every story you write has a built-in problem, was: Was it too personal. Tha... CAMERON CROWE She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. JERRY SPINELLI For me, it's actually really hard to write about my real experience. Like to do a Taylor Swift. ... ZARA LARSSON I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example... DANNY WALLACE I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I w... HENRY MILLER But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and n... DAVID BALDACCI Any idiot can write a long book. All it takes is patience and a willingness to keep pounding on the ... JASON SHEEHAN What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, ... LUANNE RICE Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad... L.M. MONTGOMERY You learn to be friends with someone, get to really know them before you get all excited about the g... STEPHANIE KLEIN I know this is rather trivial - I will not be very deep about this - but it's great when you cal... CAPRICE BOURRET They asked me once my thoughts about infinity, and I told em with all I had to think about, infi... JANE WAGNER O Devil, why do you hit us when we are down? Old boy, I know that you have no time for me, and I gue... BILLY SUNDAY If you're teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These... RICHARD FEYNMAN I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people... ARTHUR C. CLARKE I will not write about anyplace in the world unless I've been there to personally research it. SIDNEY SHELDON You don't have to always write about big stuff. Writing is about expressing yourself, you know? ... MICK JONES I had to tell Dad, 'It will be okay and be positive; keep praying and have faith'. I have al... JERMAIN DEFOE I did something wrong, I was punished and I paid for it. Now I want to think about something else an... FABIEN PELOUS Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to sta... BRUCE STERLING You know that we've got a few problems we need to talk through before we get married." "I... SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS Now that I look back, I don't know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes... R.J. PALACIO Since I had to write every week, I knew the column had to be about something I know. CANDACE BUSHNELL Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow... FRANK MCCOURT I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three t... MADELEINE L'ENGLE I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give... ROBERT FULGHUM People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for... PAUL THEROUX Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you. ERNEST HEMINGWAY He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY
More Ernest Hemingway
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics thi... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned ab... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'... ERNEST HEMINGWAY A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt abo... ERNEST HEMINGWAY After you finish a book, you know, you're dead. But no one knows you're dead. All they see i... ERNEST HEMINGWAY For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive. ERNEST HEMINGWAY 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of br... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Wars are caused by undefended wealth. ERNEST HEMINGWAY A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of oth... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born th... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things tha... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the pu... ERNEST HEMINGWAY For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and writ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY On the 'Star,' you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is usef... ERNEST HEMINGWAY To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at i... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it. ERNEST HEMINGWAY No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to b... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You're beautiful, like a May fly. ERNEST HEMINGWAY What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. ERNEST HEMINGWAY That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist&... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There's no one thing that is true. They're all true. ERNEST HEMINGWAY You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out y... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. ERNEST HEMINGWAY When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a c... ERNEST HEMINGWAY If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so trul... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true. ERNEST HEMINGWAY All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened. ERNEST HEMINGWAY As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary. ERNEST HEMINGWAY We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is no friend as loyal as a book. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I rewrote the ending to 'Farewell to Arms,' the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At on... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure? ERNEST HEMINGWAY I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy. ERNEST HEMINGWAY You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just de... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like d... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over wi... ERNEST HEMINGWAY If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long adv... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Time is the least thing we have of. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Man is not made for defeat. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the ani... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The shortest answer is doing the thing. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness excep... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder whil... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. ERNEST HEMINGWAY By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, th... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice. ERNEST HEMINGWAY When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the lice... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are f... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There's no one thing that is true. They're all true. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fill... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not ha... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. ERNEST HEMINGWAY They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it k... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the wri... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are ass... ERNEST HEMINGWAY A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelin... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Never confuse movement with action. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know? ERNEST HEMINGWAY Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nad... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. ERNEST HEMINGWAY When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again." "Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. Wh... ERNEST HEMINGWAY What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man. Under the black hat, when I had first seen the... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places. ERNEST HEMINGWAY How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American w... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, workin... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know th... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. B... ERNEST HEMINGWAY From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and a... ERNEST HEMINGWAY If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another... ERNEST HEMINGWAY God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; c... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by p... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you... ERNEST HEMINGWAY In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you d... ERNEST HEMINGWAY To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think y... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Retirement is the ugliest word in the language. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-hab... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the f... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-impor... ERNEST HEMINGWAY A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families al... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The age demanded that we dance and jammed us into iron pants. And in the end the age was handed the ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine lik... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All things truly wicked start from an innocence. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The first panacea for a misguided nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring... ERNEST HEMINGWAY When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they f... ERNEST HEMINGWAY That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Re... ERNEST HEMINGWAY My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned ab... ERNEST HEMINGWAY That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best --make it all up --but make it up so trul... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy. ERNEST HEMINGWAY To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for th... ERNEST HEMINGWAY You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards hav... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as imm... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It was a pleasant caf ERNEST HEMINGWAY Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of br... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the fun... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end ERNEST HEMINGWAY A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. ERNEST HEMINGWAY My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again afte... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over ERNEST HEMINGWAY By "guts" I mean, grace under pressure ERNEST HEMINGWAY Defense is the stronger form with the negative object, and attack the weaker form with the positive ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency. The second is war. Both brin... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Cowardice ... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imaginatio... ERNEST HEMINGWAY It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. ERNEST HEMINGWAY All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs.Not my fault. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that dist... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination. ERNEST HEMINGWAY A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a b... ERNEST HEMINGWAY In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Develop a built-in bullshit detector. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary ERNEST HEMINGWAY Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt l... ERNEST HEMINGWAY you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. ERNEST HEMINGWAY You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself. ERNEST HEMINGWAY If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first t... ERNEST HEMINGWAY We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage, and ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are f... ERNEST HEMINGWAY That is the greatest fallacy, the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enoug... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunat... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both brin... ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and lik... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to w... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Never mistake motion for action. ERNEST HEMINGWAY If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The digni... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go... ERNEST HEMINGWAY But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. ERNEST HEMINGWAY From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and a... ERNEST HEMINGWAY All things truly wicked start from innocence. ERNEST HEMINGWAY There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your... ERNEST HEMINGWAY I don't know who made the laws; But I know there ain't no law that you got to go hungry. ERNEST HEMINGWAY The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it. ERNEST HEMINGWAY I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know? ERNEST HEMINGWAY For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is be... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. ERNEST HEMINGWAY