Ernest Hemingway Quotes

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501 Quotes for Timeless Wisdom on Love, Happiness, and Writing

“There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.”

“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

“You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?”

“But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.”

“Oh, darling, I've been so miserable.”

“No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.”

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”

“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”

“He'll never be frightened. He knows too damn much.”

“My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren't with me I haven't a thing in the world.”

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.”

“I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together”

“Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”

“If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.”

“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.”

“Fish," he said, "I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

“You are all a lost generation.

[with credit to Gertrude Stein]”

“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.”

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. […] it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

“Out of all the things you could not have there were some things that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”

“If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

“In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”

“Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”

“There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.”

“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.”

“You must be prepared to work always without applause.”

“It could be worse,' Passini said respectfully. "There is nothing worse than war."
Defeat is worse."
I do not believe it," Passini said still respectfully. "What is defeat? You go home.”

“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”

“I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.”

“It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.”

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.”

“The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals”

“This is a hell of dull talk… How about some of that champagne?”

“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. … Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

“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.”

“I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.”

“A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.”

“All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.”

“You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it. Doesn’t it sound lovely beyond belief?”

“My big fish must be somewhere.”

“Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”

“Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?”

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”