"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
— Ernest Hemingway

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
— Ernest Hemingway

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Courage is grace under pressure."
— Ernest Hemingway

"I drink to make other people more interesting."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The first draft of anything is shit."
— Ernest Hemingway

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

"All thinking men are atheists."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"Write drunk; edit sober."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Never confuse movement with action."
— Ernest Hemingway

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Isn't it pretty to think so."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."
— Ernest Hemingway

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway

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

"About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
— Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon)

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

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
— Ernest Hemingway

"A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?""
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"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."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand."
— Ernest Hemingway

"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it."
— Ernest Hemingway

"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."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"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."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"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."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"Road to hell paved in unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."
— Ernest Hemingway

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
— Ernest Hemingway

"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Garden of Eden)

"Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it."
— Ernest Hemingway

"After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
— Ernest Hemingway

"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time."
— Ernest Hemingway

"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. "
— Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)

"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless."
— Ernest Hemingway

"That night in the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling the we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to hill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)