Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.

I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring.

I say that is wine, Brett held up her glass. We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.' This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. you don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. you lose the taste. Brett's glass was empty.

Out of all the things you could not have there were some things that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.

And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, the thought.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

Never, never tell them. Try and remember that. Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

I don't. I don't want anybody else to touch you. I'm silly. I get furious if they touch you.

I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.

The fish is my friend too... I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

This is a hell of dull talk... How about some of that champagne?

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

But did thee feel the earth move?

Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.

All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.

I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.

I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.

Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs but maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places.

Never be daunted

Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.