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Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

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Famous Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.”

WayEnoughSeemsRunningDiesForgetBattleMouthsAdvantageFishesExtremesGet AwayLeapPanicHookBellyAnglers
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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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 ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWayWritingHappensNextBrainWorryTiredStuckBest WaySubconsciousNext DayWriter's Block
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“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.”

PeopleWayWritingLittlesHas BeensBitsAliveLittle BitAbuseCarefulWorthyMiserableTrustedI Have LearnedPrivate LifeTrust WorthyTrusting People
Book:Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
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“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.”

MenWayWarShowsRunningHonestMurderRefuseCriminalsCombinationDirtyCombatDistrustHonest ManIdioticRacketSwine
Book:The Hemingway Collection
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“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.”

WayMeanCertainNamesNumbersHonorGloryRiversDignityAbstractVillageConcreteObsceneFarewell To Arms
Book:A Farewell to Arms
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“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.”

IfsWayTryingBelieveWellsStoriesFeelingsBeautifulAliveUglyCriticizeBeautiful YouActual Life
Book:The Hemingway Collection
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“There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.”

IfsKnowsWayWritingTryingUseRememberCan DoKnow HowProgressSorrowEach DayBetrayBetter Than You
Book:The Garden of Eden
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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.”

WayWritingLongTwoThreePiecesWeekGoes OnBest WayEach DayChaptersOne PieceCorrecting
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.”

IfsKnowsWayWritingTryingI CanHappensRememberNextNovelValuableStuckBest WayValuable Things
Book:By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
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“The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.”

KnowsWayLifeWritingFirstsHumansHardEasyHuman BeingsKnow HowSubjectsHonestLifetimeHardestThings To DoProseCheatingHardest ThingHardest Thing To Do
Book:By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
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“How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”

IfsWayWritingWellsHas BeensHelpingWould BePastLiteratureSimpleWrittenDrivenAnother WayGreat WritersWell Written
Book:Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse
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