Ernest Hemingway

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Cowardice as distinguished from panic is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

The echoes of beauty youve seen transpire Resound through dying coals of a campfire.

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

The first draft of anything is garbage.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

The circus is the only fun you can buy that is good for you.

Always do sober what you said youd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

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.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.

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.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

What is the definition of guts Grace under pressure.

Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.

Live the full life of the mind exhilarated by new ideas intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

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.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.

Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

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

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Never confuse movement with action.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

You must be prepared to work always without applause.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.

Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.

Every mans life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

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.

To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

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.

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.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.

Never mistake motion for action.

Drinking is a way of ending the day.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Man is not made for defeat.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

You're beautiful, like a May fly.

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.

You cant get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

Never think that war no matter how necessary nor how justified is not a crime.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

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.

It is good to have an end to journey toward But it is the journey that matters in the end.

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

To be a successful father theres one absolute rule when you have a kid dont look at it for the first two years.

Time is the least thing we have of.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

We have to get used to the idea that at the most important crossroads in our life there are no signs.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

To be a successful father there is one absolute rule when you have a kid dont look at it for the first two years.

You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Courage is grace under pressure.

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

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

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.

We are all broken. That's how the light gets in.

There are only three sports mountain climbing bull fighting and motor racing. All the rest are merely games.

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.

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.

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

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.

Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.

To go to bed at night in Madrid marks you as a little queer. For a long time your friends will be a little uncomfortable about it. Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night. Appointments with a friend are habitually made for after midnight at the cafe.

Defense is the stronger form with the negative object and attack the weaker form with the positive object.

The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

Until youre grown up they send you to reform school. After youre grown up they send you to the penitentiary.