Ernest Hemingway
Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.Collection: Giving
I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time while we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn't until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris, that the other thing started again.Collection: Spring
The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty bothers.Collection: Satisfaction
The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.Collection: Wall
It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick.Collection: Spiritual
I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight.Collection: Kissing
Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?Collection: Luck
Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly.Collection: Real
Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.Collection: Thinking
Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about.Collection: Dream
No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.Collection: Age
Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.Collection: Loneliness
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.Collection: Wine
I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?Collection: Writing
They arrested us after breakfast.Collection: Breakfast
I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.Collection: Stars
We thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight.Collection: Food
A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.Collection: Funny
I don't want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend.Collection: Baby
There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.Collection: Life
There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.Collection: Water
If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.Collection: Book
They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.Collection: Wise
Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.Collection: Hail
Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.Collection: Beautiful
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.Collection: Acquiring Things
There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.Collection: Writing
There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.Collection: Life
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.Collection: Two
So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.Collection: Died
My big fish must be somewhere.Collection: Big Fish
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.Collection: Fitness
And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.Collection: Forgiving
The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.Collection: Cancer
All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.Collection: Death
You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a woman who loves you and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would you?Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Success
Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.Collection: Ideas
Never confuse movement with action.Collection: Inspirational
Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.Collection: Being Positive
I am so in love with you that there isn’t anything else.Collection: Love You
We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenanceCollection: Needs
All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.Collection: Cowardice
Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.Collection: Night
Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?Collection: Live Life To The Fullest
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.Collection: Love
Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.Collection: Strange
Most people never listen.Collection: People
The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one'.... (The man who first said that) was probably a coward.... He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.Collection: Intelligent