Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

However you make your living is where your talent lies.

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.

War is not won by victory.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Man is not made for defeat.

There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

Worry destroys the ability to write.

The smallest coffins are the heaviest.

A serious writer is not to be confounded 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.

This beer is good for you. This is draft beer. Stick with the beer. Let's go and beat this guy up and come back and drink some more beer.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

Drinking is a way of ending the day.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.

Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.

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

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.

I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

God knows I didn't mean to fall in love with her

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.

You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.

To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me.

A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.

There is no rule on how to write.

It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her.

All bad writers are in love with the epic.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

To understand is to forgive.