Ernest Hemingway quotes

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that's always hungry in America.

No one you love is ever dead.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.

The real secret in writing a novel is to keep inside of your action all the time, like a horse.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés.

I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together.

“Everybody behaves badly,” I said. “Give them the proper chance.”

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.

Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.

Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in.

It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting.

I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else.

At noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it.

The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences.