"How simple the writing of literature would..." - Quote by Ernest Hemingway
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
More by Ernest Hemingway
“Before we take to the sea, we walk on land. . . Before we create, we must understand. . .”
“But I think the Great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.”
“Night is always darker before the dawn and life is the same, the hard times will pass, every thing will get better and sun will shine brighter then ever.”
More on Writing
“I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'”
“To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.”
“There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do.”
More on Originality
“A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.”
“People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”
“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”