Ernest Hemingway > Quotes

“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

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you 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 drink to make other people more interesting.”
― 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. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Write drunk; edit sober.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Courage is grace under pressure.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“All thinking men are atheists.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“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

“Never confuse movement with action.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“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

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“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

“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

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
― 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

“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

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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

“Isn't it pretty to think so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.”
― 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

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“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

“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

“When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“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

“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

“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

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

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
― 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

“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

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms