Ernest Hemingway

“Everybody has strange things that mean things to them. You couldn't help it.”

“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.”

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

“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”

“He wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cezanne had done it in a painting. You have to do it from inside yourself... You could do it if you wanted to fight for it. If you'd lived right with your eyes.”

“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.”

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

“Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.”

“I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.”

“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.”

“I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.”

“There was a trout.”

“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”

“Dizem que as sementes daquilo que havemos de realizar se encontram já todas dentro de nós, mas sempre me pareceu que, naqueles que troçam da vida, as sementes se encontram cobertas de melhor terra e de uma percentagem mais alta de adubo.”

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

“Hunger is good discipline.”

“The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.”

“The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.”

“Out of all the things you could not have there were some things that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”

“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.”

“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.”

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

“No Pilar," Agustin said. "You are not smart. You are brave. You are loyal. You have decision. You have intuition. Much decision and much heart. But you are not smart.”

“Robert Jordan saw them there on the slope, close to him now, and below he saw the road and the bridge and the long lines of vehicles below it. He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind... He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”

“Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.”

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

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”

“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”

“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

“But did thee feel the earth move?”

“The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.”

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.”

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

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

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

“Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.”

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

“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.”

“Here's a taxidermist's," Bill said. "Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?" "Come on," I said. "You're pie-eyed.""Pretty nice stuffed dogs," Bill said. "Certainly brighten up your flat.""Come on." "Just one stuffed dog. I can take 'em or leave 'em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.""Come on.""Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.""We'll get one on the way back.""All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

“I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring.”

“He felt as though he were hailing a ship.”

“I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'""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."Brett's glass was empty.”

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

“Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.”