Ernest Hemingway Quotes

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you

A man does not exist until he is drunk.

My,' she said. 'We're lucky that you found the place.' We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)

Your blood coagulates beautifully.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

No; that doesn't interest me.' 'That's because you never read a book about 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.

There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

One cat just leads to another." [Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

This is a good place," he said. "There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

Never confuse motions with action.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your nerves.

Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

I still need some 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.

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again.""Hell, " I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?""Yes. I want to ruin you.""Good, " I said. "That's what I want too.

Never fall in love?""Always, " said the count. "I am always in love.

This is a good place, " he said."There's a lot of liquor, " I agreed.

You are going to die like a dog for no good reason

People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

I had never known any man to die while speaking in terza-rima

I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

The first draft of anything is shit.

Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader

You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.

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

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

Religion is the opium of the poor

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.

You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.

Are you a communist?""No I am an anti-fascist""For a long time?""Since I have understood fascism.

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.

In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did notcompletely trust anyone.

He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

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.

We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it anymore.

I had an inheritance from my father, It was the moon and the sun.And though I roam all over the world, The spending of it’s never done.