Ernest Hemingway

“Lie life through its fullest”

“All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.”

“You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?”

“This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other.”

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

“So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one.”

“So if your life trades seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.”

“If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to the other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died.”

“There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.”

“I would take anything I love and throw it off the highest cliff you ever saw and not wait to hear it bounce.”

“I would like to bear thy son and hy daughter," she told hime. "And how can the world be made better if there are no children of us who fight against the fascists?”

“Viva my husband who was Mayor of this town”

“Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”

“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”

“He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.”

“Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.”

“Augustin stood there looking down at him and cursed him speaking slowly clearly bitterly and contemptuously and cursing as steadily as though he were dumping manure on a field lifting it with a dung fork out of a wagon.”

“His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.”

“If a four-letter man marries a five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their children be?”

“One cat just leads to another."[Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]”

“You're awfully dark, brother," he said. "You don't know how dark.”

“Damn my fish,' the boy said and he started to cry again.”

“Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.”

“I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.”

“The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.”

“Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.”

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.”

“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.(Interview with Paris Review, 1958)”

“He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.”

“No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia," karkov grinned and began. "First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes to the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the door and you see him there and you have never seen him before. He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow. First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them. Then he takes off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls from them, Then he takes off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool. That is the winter fool.""Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. that is a summer fool. This economist is a winter fool.”

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”

“That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.”

“I heard them laugh. I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep. It was not necessary to read any more. I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But i could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light. The hell there isn't!I figured that all out once, and for six months I never slept with the electric light off. That was another bright idea. To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley.”

“She was sick and when she was sick she was sick as Southern women are sick.”

“There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!”

“Mai pensare che la guerra, anche se giustificata, non sia un crimine.”

“If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.”

“Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false spring… But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

“I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.”

“It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends.'The fish is my friend too,' he said aloud. '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.”

“I wish the boy was here,' he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen.When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought.His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.”

“During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female.'They are good,' he said. 'They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish.”

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”

“I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this," he said. "Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I'll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot say them now."Consider them said, he thought. I'll say them later.”

“The fish is my friend too," he said aloud. "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.”

“Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?”

“Half fish," he said. "Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you ever kill, old fish? You do not have that spear on your head for nothing.”

“I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.”

“A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.”