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Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

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Famous Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“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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“When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.”

IfsKnowsWritingTryingBookMatterEnoughHelpingUseFineTerribleNo Matter WhatFinishedSicknessOddsGood FriendSoon EnoughEnlisted
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”

ThinkingKnowsWritingLooksLittlesMadeSometimesStoriesWatchesWorryFireWrittenFrontsGoes OnBlueStartingEdgesSentencesFlamesParisRoofOrangeTruest
Book:The Hemingway Collection
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“It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.”

WritingFeltWaterCleanWarmProofCoffeePleasantDryHatsPocketsFriendlyWornHungCoatsPencilsNotebookBenchesWaiterRacksCafesWeathered
Author:Ernest Hemingway
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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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“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.”

WritingTryingYearsUseStuffExampleThousandDialogueCraftsSwearThousand YearsSourShort TimeTimelySlangSwear Word
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 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.”

WritingFirstsMeanMadeBookHardStoriesLightHappensNextWaitingHurtMorningColdEmptyWarmEvery MorningNext DayFillingOne You LoveSomeone You Love
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.”

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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“Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).”

IfsThinkingNeedsShouldWritingI CanEndsCertainTimeThreeShould HaveLowestThree TimesSimileDictionaryDefectiveAmmunition
Book:Selected Letters, 1917-1961
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