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Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961

Book by Ernest Hemingway · 37 quotes · Writing, Ifs, Book

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Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961 Quotes

“It is a miserable thing to have people writing about your private life while you are alive. I have tried to stop it all that I could but there have been many abuses by people I trusted. You cannot stop trusting people in life but I have learned to be a little bit careful. The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them.”

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Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.”

IfsWantWritingMadeEnoughGovernmentOrderWishHurtDiedProsePatrioticLegendsLoyalPatriotIt HurtsSomething BetterStink
Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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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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“To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”

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Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.”

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Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.”

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Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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