Ernest Hemingway

“It was necessary that I leave Schruns and go to New York to rearrange publishers. I did my business inNew York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from the Gare de 1'Est that would take me down to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second or the third.”

“During our last year in the mountains new people came deep into our lives and nothing was ever the same again. The winter of the avalanches was like a happy and innocent winter in childhood compared to the next winter, a nightmare winter disguised as the greatest fun of all, and the murderous summer that was to follow. It was that year that the rich showed up.”

“I remember the smell of the pines and the sleeping on the mattresses of beech leaves in the woodcutters' huts and the skiing through the forest following the tracks of hares and of foxes. In the high mountains above the tree line I remember following the track of a fox until I came in sight of him and watching him stand with his right forefoot raised and then go carefully to stop and then pounce, and the whiteness and the clutter of a ptarmigan bursting out of the snow and flying away and over the ridge.”

“Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold colour and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk's eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, 'Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?'Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.”

“Scott told me about the Riviera and how my wife and I must come there' the next summer and how we would go there and how he would find a place for us that was not expensive and we would both work hard every day and swim and lie on the beach and be brown and only have a single aperitif before lunch and one before dinner. Zelda. would be happy there, he said. She loved to swim and was a beautiful diver and she was happy with that life and would want him to work and everything would be disciplined. He and Zelda. and their daughter were going to go there that summer. I was trying to get him to write his stories as well as he could and not trick them to conform to any formula, as he had explained that he did.”

“He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer.”

“When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.”

“We both touched wood on the cafe table and the waiter came to see what it was we wanted. But what we wanted he, nor anyone else, nor knocking on wood or on marble, as this cafe table-top was, could ever bring us. But we did not know it that night and we were very happy.”

“He told me how he had first met her during the war and then lost her and won her back, and about their marriage and then about something tragic that had happened to them at St-Raphael about a year ago. This first version that he told me of Zelda . and a French naval aviator falling in love was truly a sad story and I believe it was a true story. Later he told me other versions of it as though trying them for use in a novel, but none was as sad as this first one and I always believed the first one, although any of them might have been true. They were better told each time; but they never hurt you the same way the first one did.”

“The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”

“That was the end of the first part of Paris. Paris was never to be the same again although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed. We never went back to the Vorarlberg and neither did the rich.”

“What kind of a hand is that,' he said. 'Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good.”

“But, thank God, [the fish] are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.”

“I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.”

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”

“He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later.”

“But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. we thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.”

“Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.”

“I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things.”

“Where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.”

“Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.”

“You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are.”

“do you want me to shoot thee, ingles?...quieres? it is nothing.”

“Un uomo intelligente a volte è costretto a ubriacarsi per passare il tempo tra gli idioti.”

“To win a war, we must kill our enemies.”

“This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

“The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny. Those who have entered it honorably, and no men ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality.”

“Your blood coagulates beautifully.”

“I felt very lonely when they were all there.”

“The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”

“Memory is hunger.”

“Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day’s work.”

“The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn...”

“I only like two other things; one is bad for my work and the other is over in half an hour or fifteen minutes. Sometimes less. Sometimes a good deal less.”

“With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”

“Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.”

“Every true story ends in death.”

“Ma arvasin, et olin juba kõige eest maksnud. Mitte nii nagu naised, kes aina maksavad ja maksavad ja maksavad. Ei mingit tasu ja karistuse põhimõtet. Lihtne väärtuste vahetus. Sa annad midagi ära ja saad midagi vastu. Või sa töötad millegi eest. Nii või teisiti maksad sa kõige eest, mis midagi väärt on. Olin lunastanud endale elus palju asju, mis mulle meeldisid, ja sellepärast olin elust mõnu tundnud. Asjade eest, mis sulle rõõmu valmistavad, võib maksta mitmeti - teadmiste, kogemuste, riski või rahaga. Et elust mõnu tunda, selleks tuleb õppida oma raha eest midagi täisväärtuslikku saama ja seda teadlikult nautima. Üldiselt on see võimalik. Maailm on hea kaubamaja.”

“But are there not many fascists in your country?""There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes.”

“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

“He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I sin?”

“The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.”

“I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.”

“But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one 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. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

“Be patient, hand," he said. "I do this for you.”

“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.”

“pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death”

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

“They arrested us after breakfast.”

“Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.”