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Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

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Famous Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.”

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Book:The Good Life According to Hemingway
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“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of the country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

InspirationalCountryRememberSufferingCarGainsDrivenHillsCyclesSweatRidingAccurateImpressRemembranceCoastBikeMotorTouringBicycleCyclingBikingRiding A BicycleCyclistsBike RidingTandemMotor CarsTandem BikesTandem BicyclesMountain BikingRiding Your BikeRiding In A Car
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.”

PeopleIfsLoveMayDoeSpeakWishAirFoolAll ThingsRidiculousConfusionTime LoveBladder
Book:The Hemingway Collection
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“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”

WritingPoliticalSpeakWishNaturalCasesCriticismLuckCriticsReputationHopefullyLinksDiscoveringJuiceWish YouImpotencePredictingAffiliationBalzacZola
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.”

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Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”

IfsShowsAbleGamesCan DoLosesDealsAttitudeOughtToolsGreenGolfImprovementCraftsConventionalYou Can Do ItGrammarLicenseMy AttitudePunctuationCroquet
Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior FBI-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school. ... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”

MenWritingSchoolYoungCan DoFourAliveImagineMissingBedCriticismGoldCriticsTongueListsHolesCombinationDirtyEditorsProfessorsBiographiesSheetsPrivate LifeJuniorsFbiLaundryColumnistsJung
Book:The Good Life According to Hemingway
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“If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.”

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Book:By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
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“In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers' books. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves. Joyce was a very great writer and he would only explain what he was doing to jerks. Other writers that he respected were supposed to be able to know what he was doing by reading it.”

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Book:Conversations with Ernest Hemingway
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“Until the dead are buried they change somewhat in appearance each day. The color change in Caucasian races is from white to yellow, to yellow-green, to black. If left long enough in the heat the flesh comes to resemble coal-tar, especially where it has been broken or torn, and it has quite a visible tarlike iridescence. The dead grow larger each day until sometimes they become quite too big for their uniforms, filling these until they seem blown tight enough to burst. The individual members may increase in girth to an unbelievable extent and faces fill as taut and globular as balloons.”

IfsMayLongHas BeensWarSometimesEnoughBigsSeemsFacesIndividualLeftGrowsBlackWhiteRaceColorBrokenMembersIncreaseGreenAppearanceFleshHeatVisibleEach DayBuriedYellowUniformsCoalTornUnbelievableFillingBalloonsGreat WarCaucasianGirth
Book:Death in the Afternoon
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“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 iceberg 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.”

IfsKnowsWritingMayDoeEnoughFeelingsWaterMovementReaderDignityDuesProseHollowIcebergTip Of The Iceberg
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.”

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Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.”

WritingLastsLiteratureStepsGreaterWallEasierEditorsFrustratedRefugeAssociatesHarvardStep UpParodyWriting On The Wall
Book:The Good Life According to Hemingway
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“For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

ShouldWritingTryingBookSometimesDoneSucceedLuckNew BeginningsAttainmentTry Again
Book:Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition
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“The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can't do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That's how you make it all of one piece.”

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Book:By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
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“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”

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Book:By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
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“Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.”

PeopleIfsWantLittlesCountryReasonWould BeSoundQualityClearLike YouBecomingEconomicsBasesTablesFinancialValuableComplicatedGladFranceSincereWant MeObscureSimplestAppreciatedWaiterLittle Money
Book:The Sun Also Rises
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