Ernest Hemingway (Writer)

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.

— Ernest Hemingway life

I've been in love (truly) with five women, theand the

— Ernest Hemingway love

All modern American literature comes from one book bycalled Huckleberry Finn...

— Ernest Hemingway literature

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai "Ng

— Ernest Hemingway man

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

— Ernest Hemingway art

And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

— Ernest Hemingway light

Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.

— Ernest Hemingway wit

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

— Ernest Hemingway body

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

— Ernest Hemingway funny

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

— Ernest Hemingway war

God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp-followers.

— Ernest Hemingway war

I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.

— Ernest Hemingway death

To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors and one house would be fitted up with special copies of theprinted on soft tissue and kept in the toilets on every floor and in the other house we would use theand the New Republic.

— Ernest Hemingway love

Write me at the Hotel Quintana, Pamplona, Spain. Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something

— Ernest Hemingway pain

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

— Ernest Hemingway hope

‘It’s his sense of self-preservation.’ ‘The great Italian sense.’ ‘The greatest Italian sense.’

— Ernest Hemingway self

Well, Fitz, I looked all through that bible, it was in very fine print and stumbling on that great book Ecclesiastics, read it aloud to all who would listen. Soon I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in it — although I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones so I called the book Men Without Women hoping it would have a large sale among the fairies and old Vassar Girls.

— Ernest Hemingway men

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

— Ernest Hemingway war

Grace under pressure

— Ernest Hemingway race

Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.

— Ernest Hemingway pain

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

— Ernest Hemingway good

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.

— Ernest Hemingway art

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.

— Ernest Hemingway will

Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.

— Ernest Hemingway men

Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?... The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

— Ernest Hemingway life

All modern American literature comes from one book bycalled Huckleberry Finn... American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot, i.e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.

— Ernest Hemingway life

However you make your living is where your talent lies.

— Ernest Hemingway living

The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian 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."

— Ernest Hemingway art

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

— Ernest Hemingway time

Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.

— Ernest Hemingway men

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.

— Ernest Hemingway you

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

— Ernest Hemingway war

I’ve fought two draws with Mr. , and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr.unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.

— Ernest Hemingway body

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

— Ernest Hemingway men

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

— Ernest Hemingway life

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is — but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit.

— Ernest Hemingway self

It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

— Ernest Hemingway books

Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. . Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. . I’ve fought two draws with Mr. , and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr.unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.

— Ernest Hemingway art

I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

— Ernest Hemingway change

Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates.

— Ernest Hemingway war

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

— Ernest Hemingway mind

I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

— Ernest Hemingway work

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

— Ernest Hemingway change

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

— Ernest Hemingway people

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

— Ernest Hemingway love

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 similies (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

— Ernest Hemingway time

You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice.

— Ernest Hemingway good

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

— Ernest Hemingway business

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to , nor to , speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy — happier — today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer .

— Ernest Hemingway war

I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft.did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn't.

— Ernest Hemingway you

's crazy. All poets are.... They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin. For history's sake we shouldn't keep him there.

— Ernest Hemingway history

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. ... Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

— Ernest Hemingway sin

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

— Ernest Hemingway

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it — don't cheat with it.

— Ernest Hemingway art

If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

— Ernest Hemingway success

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

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.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

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.

— Ernest Hemingway will

You're beautiful, like a May fly.

— Ernest Hemingway beautiful

You are an expatriate, see? You hang around caf

— Ernest Hemingway you

A bottle of wine was good company.

— Ernest Hemingway good

All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.

— Ernest Hemingway hell

This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.

— Ernest Hemingway good

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around caf

— Ernest Hemingway death

'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'

— Ernest Hemingway you

'You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.' 'Yes.' 'It’s sort of what we have instead of God.'

— Ernest Hemingway good

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”

— Ernest Hemingway time

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

— Ernest Hemingway man

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

— Ernest Hemingway war

I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success.

— Ernest Hemingway success

You're my religion. You're all I've got.

— Ernest Hemingway religion

Life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.

— Ernest Hemingway man

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

— Ernest Hemingway time

'Darling, would you like to grow a beard?' 'Would you like me to?' 'It might be fun. I'd like to see you with a beard.' 'All right. I'll grow one. I'll start now this minute. It's a good idea. It will give me something to do.'

— Ernest Hemingway art

That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.

— Ernest Hemingway story

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

— Ernest Hemingway words

The great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

— Ernest Hemingway art

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.

— Ernest Hemingway time

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.

— Ernest Hemingway good

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

— Ernest Hemingway sin

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.

— Ernest Hemingway death

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.

— Ernest Hemingway live

The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

— Ernest Hemingway life

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

— Ernest Hemingway love

Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.

— Ernest Hemingway time

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

— Ernest Hemingway death

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

— Ernest Hemingway prose

A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a , but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

— Ernest Hemingway writer

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

— Ernest Hemingway writing

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 new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

— Ernest Hemingway life

"Old Newsman Writes: A Letter from Cuba" in Esquire (December 1934)

— Ernest Hemingway man

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.

— Ernest Hemingway man

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

— Ernest Hemingway books

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