Quotes from book
Death in the Afternoon

Death in the Afternoon
Ernest Hemingway

Death in the Afternoon is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting, published in 1932. The book provides a look at the history and what Hemingway considers the magnificence of bullfighting. It also contains a deeper contemplation on the nature of fear and courage. While essentially a guide book, there are three main sections: Hemingway's work, pictures, and a glossary of terms.

Ernest Hemingway photo

“There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

Ernest Hemingway photo

“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

Ernest Hemingway photo

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

Ernest Hemingway photo

“About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 1

Ernest Hemingway photo

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

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Any man's life, told truly, is a novel…”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 7

Ernest Hemingway photo

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things only because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Hemingway's famous iceberg theory of writing.
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9

Ernest Hemingway photo

“The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 10

Ernest Hemingway photo

“A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
Context: A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9

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