A Flame of Pure Fire Quotes

“There were a lot of Americans in Paris and I sparred with a couple, just to be obliging,” Dempsey said. “But there was one fellow I wouldn’t mix it with. That was Ernest Hemingway. He was about twenty-five or so and in good shape, and I was getting so I could read people, or anyway men, pretty well. I had this sense that Hemingway, who really thought he could box, would come out of the corner like a madman. To stop him, I would have to hurt him badly. I didn’t want to do that to Hemingway. That’s why I never sparred with him. “If you write this and you want to hand the people a laugh, tell it like this. Did I duck Harry Wills? Hell, no. They just never offered me a decent purse to fight him. The only man I ever ducked was Ernest Hemingway. I never ducked a fighter, just a writer.”
― Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s