Ernest Hemingway Quotes

“There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.”

“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way.”

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

“Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?”

“I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me.”

“How would that premise stand up if he examined it? That was probably why the Communists were always cracking down on Bohemiansism. When you were drunk or when you committed adultery you recognised your own personal fallability of that so mutable substitute for the apostles' creed, the party line. Down with Bohemianism, the sin of Majakowski.”

“At night, never go to bed without knowing what you'll write tomorrow.”

“In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more.”

“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.”

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.”

“He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.”

“Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.”

“Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.”

“How lazily the sun goes down in Granada, it hides beneath the water, it conceals in the Alhambra!”

“I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you”

“Courage is grace under pressure.”

“I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I wouldn't kill myself. When a man is in rebellion against death, as I am in rebellion against death, he gets pleasure out of taking to himself one of the godlike attributes; that of giving it.”

“Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.”

“The bulls are my best friends." I translated to Brett. "You kill your friends?" she asked. "Always," he said in English, and laughed. "So they don't kill me.”

“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one'.... (The man who first said that) was probably a coward.... He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.”

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.”

“Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”

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

“I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time.”