Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

The madness all over

All remembrance of things past is fiction.

I even read aloud the part of the novel that I had rewritten, which is about as low as a writer can get and much more dangerous for him as a writer than glacier skiing unroped before the full winter snowfall has set over the crevices.

Tell me everything at once.

The world breaks everyone and later many are strong at the broken places.

Gradually, then suddenly.

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.

When people are talking listen completely. Don't be thinking what you are going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. ... And always think of other people.

That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things.

Everyone given the right opportunity will behave badly.

The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grit and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban boilto houses, shacks whose only romance was their names

Fall for them, but don't let them ruin you.

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.

Fight them," he said. "I'll fight them until I die.

Write the truest sentence you know. Then write another. -- Hemingway's advice to other young writers in A Moveable Feast.

Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky.

He used the word gamut.

The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed.

I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow.

Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea.

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch.

I put my arm around her and felt our hearts beating through our sweaters and I brought my right hand up and felt her neck smooth and the hair thick against it under my fingers that were shaking.

I understand. That's the trouble. I understand. I'll understand all the time. All day and all night. Especially all night. I'll understand. You don't have to worry about that.