Authors — Quotes

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.