"Actually if a writer needs a dictionary..." - Quote by Ernest Hemingway
Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
More by Ernest Hemingway
“It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her.”
“My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.”
“I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.”
More on Writing
“I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.”
“The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.”
“People spend a lifetime thinking abouthow they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me, it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'”
More on Language
“The more syllables a euphemism has, the further divorced from reality it is.”
“[Heraclitus speaks as if] in entrancement ... but [also] truthfully.”
“People who live in an age of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know that there are other kinds of murder than by dagger or assault; they also know that whatever is well said is believed.”