“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
"Courage is grace under pressure."
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
“Never confuse movement with action.”
“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. ” , The Old Man and the Sea
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. 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.” , A Farewell to Arms
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” The Wild Years
“Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.” , The Sun Also Rises
“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one'.... (The man who first said that) was probably a coward.... He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.” A Farewell to Arms
“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.” , The Sun Also Rises
“Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together”, The Sun Also Rises
"A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book."
"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things
that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of
it being above water."
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. ”
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”
, A Farewell to Arms
“I drink to make other people more interesting.”
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to
your former self.”
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
“All thinking men are atheists.” , A Farewell to Arms
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
“Courage is grace under pressure.”
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” , Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” , Men Without Women
“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, wintery 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 died for no reason.” , A Moveable Feast
“There's no one thing that's true. It's all true.” , For Whom the Bell Tolls
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
, A Farewell to Arms
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.”
“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
“I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.” , A Farewell to Arms
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
“you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun
Also Rises
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” , A Moveable Feast
“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
“But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.”
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The
only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day
had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as
good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” A Farewell to Arms
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”
“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. ”
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.”
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.”