Ernest Hemingway on Writing

by Larry W. Phillips

Every day and every night there is a strong possibility that you will get killed and not have to write.

So never think one story represents my viewpoint because it is much too complicated for that.

We know war is bad. Yet sometimes it is necessary to fight. But still war is bad and any man who says it is not is a liar.

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

Guys who think they are geniuses because they have never learned how to say no to a typewriter are a common phenomenon.

Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.

I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in it—although I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones

What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing….

I am just about as pleasant to have around as a bear with sore toenails.