Ernest Hemingway
Master of understated prose, Nobel laureate
Most quoted
"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."
— from A Farewell to Arms, 1929
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you have 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."
— from Death in the Afternoon, 1964
"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."
— from Death in the Afternoon (posthumously published preface), 1964
All quotes by Ernest Hemingway (235)
Never confuse movement with action.
The most important thing is to write. Write every day.
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you have finished reading one you will feel that all that has happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you.
I have learned that the only way to write a good book is to write a bad one first.
I write to find out what I think.
I still believe in man against the world.
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
It is better to be a good writer than a good anything else.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.
I have always tried to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
The only way to write is to write what you know, and what you know is what you have lived.
I am not a hero. I am a writer. And I write about heroes.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
I would like to live to be 100 and write a book a year.
The only time you should look back is to see how far you've come.
I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of not living.
It is hard to be a man.
I am getting old and I am tired of being brave.
Contemporaries of Ernest Hemingway
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).