“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. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

Nobel Prize Speech (1954)
Context: Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten. Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. 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. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He …" by Ernest Hemingway?
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961

Related quotes

“Never feel shame for trying and failing, for he who never failed is he who never tried.”

Variant: Never feel shame for trying and failing for he who has never failed is he who has never tried.
Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World

T. E. Hulme photo

“The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in… He has not created something, he has seen something.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Source: Speculations (Essays, 1924)

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
Context: A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [... ] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.

Elizabeth Gilbert photo
J. Sheridan Le Fanu photo

“He has attained supremacy in one particular line: he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels

M. R. James "The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu" (1923). http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveLeFanu.html
Criticism

Samuel Beckett photo

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Worstward Ho (1983)
Variant: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Context: All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Françoise Sagan photo
Stephen Hawking photo

“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006) http://english.people.com.cn/200606/14/eng20060614_273839.html

Oliver Heaviside photo

“The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, “Do try to be like other people. Don’t frown.” And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.”

Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist

Electromagnetic Theory (1912), Volume III; p. 1; "The Electrician" Pub. Co., London.
Context: The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, “Do try to be like other people. Don’t frown.” And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.
Reader, if young, take warning by his sad life and death. For though it may be an honour to be different from other people, if Carlyle’s dictum about the 30 million be still true, yet other people do not like it. So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do. In particular, if you are going to write a book, remember the wooden-headed. So be rigorous; that will cover a multitude of sins. And do not frown.

Herman Melville photo

Related topics