Top 824 Quotes & Sayings by Ernest Hemingway - Page 14

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta.

I am like a blind pig when I work.

If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything?

I used to play cello. My mother kept me out of school a whole year to study music and counterpoint. She thought I had ability, but I was absolutely without talent.

Your blood coagulates beautifully.

Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.

Ascensions into heaven are like falling leaves sad and happy all at the same time Going away isn't really sad especially when your going enables a new kind of presence to be born.

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

The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would distrust a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it.

A man does not exist until he is drunk.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.

This beer is good for you. This is draft beer. Stick with the beer. Let's go and beat this guy up and come back and drink some more beer.

You don't have to destroy me. Do you?

Never confuse motions with action.

I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day.

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

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?

Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.

If you're looking for messages, try Western Union.

Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa.

This is a good place," he said. "There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.

I do not want you ever to initiate any action for any refunds of taxes without first consulting me and presenting the matter fully to me so that I may judge whether it is an honorable and ethical action to take, not simply legally, but according to my own personal standards.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

My,' she said. 'We're lucky that you found the place.' We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.

I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Especially do all stories of monogamy end in death, and your man who is monogamous while he often lives most happily, dies in the most lonely fashion.

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.

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.

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

We have very primitive emotions,” he said . “It's impossible not to be competitive. Spoils everything, though.

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

The only place where you could see life and death, i. e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it. I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.

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

If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.

Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.

Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your nerves.