Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

They would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him. "Ay," the old man said. "Galanos. Come on galanos.

Her lips an island in the sudden white sea of pain that came in a shining, unbearable, rising, blinding wave and swept him clean.

Ought not to daunt you. Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public.

And pain does not matter to a man.

Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature.

For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books.

Like all men with a faculty that surpasses human requirements, his father was very nervous. Then, too, he was sentimental, and, like most sentimental people, he was both cruel and abused. Also, he had much bad luck, and it was not all of it his own. He had died in a trap that he had helped only a little to set, and they had all betrayed him in their various ways before he died.

She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.

You cannot imagine how one can tire of pine trees.

They all had the politics of horse thieves. He believed in the Republic as a form of government but the Republic would have to get rid of all of that bunch of horse thieves that brought it to the pass it was in when the rebellion started. Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?

The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn...

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

I want to pull my hair back high and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel, she said. I want to have a kitty sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.

a man doesn't want something reasonable, but practical.

Writing is a hard business, but nothing makes you feel better

The fact the book was a tragic one did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could have only one end.

There is not much future in men being friends with a great woman although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers.

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. [on Brit poet Percy Wyndham Lewis]

Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?" What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying. "You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness was filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

I learned one thing." "What?" "Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.

But those were Frenchmen and you can work out military problems clearly when you are fighting in somebody else's country. Yes, I replied, when it is your own country you can not use it so scientifically. The Russians did, to trap Napoleon. Yes, but they had plenty of country. If you tried to retreat to trap Napoleon in Italy you would find yourself in Brindiri.