Ernest Hemingway Quotes: 62

• There is no friend as loyal as a book.

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

• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

  The Garden of Eden

• I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

• I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

• Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

• The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

• The first draft of anything is shit.

• There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

• All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

• 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.

  A Farewell to Arms

• I drink to make other people more interesting.

• The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

  Men Without Women

• When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

• 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.

• Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

  The Old Man and the Sea

• It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

• All thinking men are atheists.

  A Farewell to Arms

• Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

• Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

• My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

• The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

• The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

• When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

  A Farewell to Arms

• Oh Jake,"Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."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?

  The Sun Also Rises

• If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

• No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

  A Farewell to Arms

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

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

• I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference.

• We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.

  A Moveable Feast

• After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

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

  Death in the Afternoon

• God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful...

  A Farewell to Arms

• Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.

  A Farewell to Arms

• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

• 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.

• Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.

• If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

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

  The Sun Also Rises

• I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

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

• it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

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

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

  The Sun Also Rises

• Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.

  The Sun Also Rises

• It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

• People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

• For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

• You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

• What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

• Religion is the opium of the poor

• I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

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

  A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

• The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought

  The Old Man and the Sea

• Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.

  The Old Man and the Sea

• wonder what day god created the egg' 'how should we know? we should not question. our stay on earth is not for long. let us rejoice and believe and give thanks'. 'eat a egg

  The Sun Also Rises

• 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.

• But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés, and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can happen to man.

  For Whom the Bell Tolls

• He can't have gone, he said "Christ know he can't have gone. He's making a turn. Maybe he has been hooked before and her remembers something of it."The he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy.

  The Old Man and the Sea

• Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

  Death in the Afternoon