"In going where you have to go,..." - Quote by Ernest Hemingway

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.
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More by Ernest Hemingway

“But don't try to find an untroublesome woman. She will dull out on you. What makes a woman good in bed makes it impossible for her to live alone.”
— Ernest Hemingway
“Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.”
— Ernest Hemingway
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”
— Ernest Hemingway

More on Writing

“What is written is merely the dregs of experience.”
— Franz Kafka
“I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work.... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.”
— Dave Barry
“Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.”
— APJ Abdul Kalam

More on Experience

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of the country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
— Ernest Hemingway
“To barter and lose is better than not to go forth.”
— Kahlil Gibran
“Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.”
— Virginia Woolf