Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

You're my religion. You're all I've got.

If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.

Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.

We think. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates war. There is a class that control a country that is stupid and down not realise anything and never can. That is why we have this war. Also they make money out of it.

But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

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

And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.' 'What did you say?' 'I said we could have everything.' 'We can have everything.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can have the whole world.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can go everywhere.' 'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.' 'It's ours.' 'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.

There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning. Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill. Night life goes round and round and you look at the wall to make it stop. Night life comes out of a bottle and goes into a jar. If you think how much are the drinks it is not night life.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.

Not the why but the what.

Oh, don't go to hell," I said. "Stick around. We're just starting lunch.

Remember, everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong." - "You think so?" - "I'm quite sure. If you don't it doesn't matter. Nothing will matter then

She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

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 country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.

If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? ...