Quotes from book
Across the River and into the Trees

Name: Across the River and into the Trees
Author: Ernest Hemingway

Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1950, after first being serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine earlier that year. The title derives from the last words of U.S. Civil War Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”Hemingway's novel opens with Colonel Richard Cantwell, 50 and with a heart problem, duck hunting in Trieste, Italy. It then presents his life in a lengthy flashback, with Cantwell thinking about a young Venetian woman, Renata, and his experiences during World War I.

“What happens to people that love each other?'
'I suppose they have whatever they have and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness for ever.”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

Colonel Richard Cantwell and Renata in Ch. 38
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

“He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled…”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

Source: Across the River and into the Trees

“Tell me some true things about fighting.'
'Tell me you love me.'
'I love you,' the girl said. 'You can publish it in the Gazzettino if you like. I love your hard, flat body and your strange eyes that frighten me when they become wicked. I love your hand and all your other wounded places.”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

Renata and Colonel Richard Cantwell in Ch. 12
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

“They started two hours before daylight, and at first, it was not necessary to break the ice across the canal as other boats had gone on ahead. In each boat, in the darkness, so you could not see, but only hear him, the poler stood in the stern, with his long oar. The shooter sat on a shooting stool fastened to the top of a box that contained his lunch and shells, and the shooter's two, or more, guns were propped against the load of wooden decoys. Somewhere, in each boat, there was a sack with one or two live mallard hens, or a hen and a drake, and in each boat there was a dog who shifted and shivered uneasily at the sound of the wings of the ducks that passed overhead in the darkness.”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

Source: Across the River and into the Trees (1950), Ch. 1 (the opening paragraph of the novel)

“What happens to people that love each other?”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

'I suppose they have whatever they have and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness for ever.'
Colonel Richard Cantwell and Renata in Ch. 38
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

“Tell me some true things about fighting.'
'Tell me you love me.”

Ernest Hemingway book Across the River and into the Trees

'I love you,' the girl said. 'You can publish it in the Gazzettino if you like. I love your hard, flat body and your strange eyes that frighten me when they become wicked. I love your hand and all your other wounded places.'
Renata and Colonel Richard Cantwell in Ch. 12
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)