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)
I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
I stand for what I believe in, and I believe in what I stand for.
The great thing about the dead is that they are dead.
A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes, but the problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true, to make it endure.
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed.
No writer who is any good can ever be a contented man.
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
The writer must write what he has to say, not what he has been told to say.
I have tried to make it clear that I am not a literary man. I am a writer.
The thing is to write what you know, and to write it truly.
I still believe in the old values. I believe in honor, courage, and sacrifice.
The only time you should look back in life is to see how far you've come.
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
We are all alone in this world, and we must make the best of it.
The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers, is to have a built-in, shockproof shit detector.
All good books are alike in that if you have read one carefully you will feel that it all happened to you.
I learned a long time ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
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-eighth of it being above water.
It's good to have an end to journey toward; but it's the journey that matters, in the end.
Contemporaries of Ernest Hemingway
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).