Ernest Hemingway Quotes - Page 2

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Named Harris," Bill said. "Ever know him, Mike? He was in the war, too.""Fortunate fellow," Mike said. "What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back.

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

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.

Look at the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind yourself. Then, one day, for no reason, he sees you as ugly as you really are and he is not blind anymore and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling...

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

He smelled the odor of the pine boughs under him, the piney smell of the crushed needles and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. ... This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark? That was the odor of cactus flowers, mimosa and the sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Or a Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Or a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven?

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

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

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.

It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't.' She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful...

I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Never mistake motion for action.

She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after everyone else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.

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

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.

Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.

He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasn't worth it.

The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

wonder what day god created the egg' 'how should we know? we should not question. our stay on earth is not for long. let us rejoice and believe and give thanks'. 'eat a egg

Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.

I had never known any man to die while speaking in terza-rima

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things,

There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning. Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill. Night life goes round and round and you look at the wall to make it stop. Night life comes out of a bottle and goes into a jar. If you think how much are the drinks it is not night life.

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?''Of course. Who said it?''I don't know.''He was probably a coward,' she said. "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.

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

Don't you believe I love you? Don't know how I can make you believe. I didn't want to kiss you goodbye--that was the trouble--I wanted to kiss you goodnight. […] Of course I love you. I love you all the time. […] I'd like to hold you and kiss you so that you wouldn't doubt whether I wanted to or not.

Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again.""Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?""Yes. I want to ruin you.""Good," I said. "That's what I want too.

Hem, you know I don't think that owner's wife where you live likes me. She wouldn't let me wait upstairs for you.''I'll tell her,' I said.'Don't bother. I can always wait here. It's very pleasant in the sun now, isn't it?''It's fall now,' I said. 'I don't think you dress warmly enough.''It's only cool in the evening,' Evan said. 'I'll wear my coat.''Do you know where it is?''No. But it's somewhere safe.''How do you know?''Because I left the poem in it.

If my Valentine you won't be,I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader

A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists.

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

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. 

Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing or very little the shock can kill a man.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes but it is sort of necessary.

There isnt always an explanation for everything.

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.

You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.

You know I'm no squealer, Harry.''You're a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise you.''I'm a good man,' he said. 'You oughtn't to talk to me like that.''They can't make it fast enough to keep you a good man,' I told him. But I didn't worry about him any more because who was going to believe him?

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

You're going to have things to repent, boy,' Mr. John had told Nick. 'That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.

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.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.

No. Have it here where it is quiet." "You and your quiet", said Brett. "What is it men feel about quiet?" "We like it," said the count. Like you like your noise, my dear.

But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

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