“The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.”

—  Ernest Hemingway

A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

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Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961

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