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Ernest Hemingway quotes

184 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as Ernest Hemingway wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around. Page 1 of 8.

Illustrated portrait of Ernest Hemingway
Pen-and-ink illustration of a portable typewriter and manuscript pages beside a Paris window

How these quotes were checked

How we decide whether a quote is genuine

This collection separates Hemingway's own words from the sentences attached to his name later. A line enters the collection only when its wording can be checked against a book, a published interview, a speech transcript, or a dated letter discussed by the archive that holds the papers.

The distinction matters because fiction is not autobiography. Lines spoken by Jake Barnes, Catherine Barkley, Santiago, or another character remain credited to the book and speaker. Reported conversation is labeled as reported conversation. A popular paraphrase is not silently repaired and presented as a verbatim Hemingway sentence.

Portrait of Ernest Hemingway in Paris, 1924
Hemingway in Paris, 1924 — the year he quit journalism to write only fiction, over the sawmill at 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, JFK Presidential Library. Public domain.

Five famous Ernest Hemingway quotes, fact-checked

A sentence linked to Ernest Hemingway may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.

Misattributed

“Write drunk, edit sober”

No evidence places this sentence in Hemingway's work or letters. The closest documented precursor is in Peter De Vries's 1964 novel Reuben, Reuben, published three years after Hemingway died. Hemingway's 1958 Paris Review interview instead describes disciplined early-morning work and daily rewriting.

  • — Jess Zafarris, Did Hemingway say 'write drunk, edit sober'? (2018)
  • — George Plimpton, Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21 (1958), working routine and revision questions
Unproven

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”

There is no substantive evidence that Hemingway wrote the six-word story or won a lunch-table bet with it. Newspaper versions of the baby-shoes idea circulated while he was still a child, and the familiar Hemingway anecdote appeared decades after his death.

  • — Garson O'Toole, For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn (2013)
Common paraphrase

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places”

This is based on a passage in A Farewell to Arms, but it is not the complete sentence as printed. The 1929 novel spells 'every one' as two words and continues by contrasting the people the world breaks with the people it kills. Our book quotation preserves that wording and identifies Book Four, Chapter 34.

  • — Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Four, Chapter 34
Reported speech

“Courage is grace under pressure”

Dorothy Parker's 1929 New Yorker profile reports that Hemingway defined 'guts' with the words 'grace under pressure.' The familiar sentence replaces 'guts' with 'courage' and removes the question-and-answer setting. It is therefore a shortened paraphrase of reported speech, not a line from one of his books.

  • — Dorothy Parker, The Artist's Reward (1929), closing section
Reported speech

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

Not from Hemingway's books or letters. The sentence comes from Arnold Samuelson's memoir With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984), which reports Hemingway saying it in conversation in 1934, half a century before the book appeared. It may well preserve his words, but the only evidence is one companion's recollection published twenty-three years after Hemingway's death.

  • — Arnold Samuelson, With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984)

Nobel Banquet speech (1954) quotes

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Banquet speech (1954)
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Banquet speech (1954)
A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Banquet speech (1954)

letter to Grace Hall Hemingway (1922) quotes

Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that's always hungry in America.
— Ernest Hemingway, letter to Grace Hall Hemingway (1922)

letter to Sara Murphy (1935) quotes

No one you love is ever dead.
— Ernest Hemingway, letter to Sara Murphy (1935)

The Paris Review interview (1958) quotes

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Paris Review interview (1958)
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Paris Review interview (1958)

letter to Arnold Gingrich (1934) quotes

The real secret in writing a novel is to keep inside of your action all the time, like a horse.
— Ernest Hemingway, letter to Arnold Gingrich (1934)

A Farewell to Arms quotes

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Four, Chapter 34
That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
— The priest (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book One, Chapter 11
I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Four, Chapter 34
No I’m not. But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.
— Catherine Barkley (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Two, Chapter 21
No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
— Count Greffi (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Four, Chapter 35
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Three, Chapter 27
Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Three, Chapter 27
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book One, Chapter 1
Poor, poor dear Cat. And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Five, Chapter 41
You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Five, Chapter 41
But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Five, Chapter 41
But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Five, Chapter 41
“Let’s drop the war.” “It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.”
— Frederic and Catherine (exchange) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book One, Chapter 5
What is defeat? You go home.
— Passini (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book One, Chapter 9
War is not won by victory. What if we take San Gabriele? What if we take the Carso and Monfalcone and Trieste? Where are we then?
— Passini (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book One, Chapter 9
God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one.
— Frederic (narration) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Two, Chapter 14
It’s all right. Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do.
— Catherine Barkley (dialogue) · Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Book Two, Chapter 16

From the books

Every book with a quote collection of its own, each line verified against the text.

Questions about Ernest Hemingway quotes

Did Ernest Hemingway say “write drunk, edit sober”?

No reliable source shows that he did. The closest documented wording appears in Peter De Vries's 1964 novel Reuben, Reuben, published after Hemingway's death. Hemingway told George Plimpton that he worked early in the morning and rewrote each day; that record points in the opposite direction.

Did Ernest Hemingway write “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”?

The attribution is unproven. Versions of the baby-shoes story circulated in newspapers while Hemingway was a child, and researchers have found no contemporary evidence for the later story about him winning a bet with six words. Read the full Atlas fact-check.

Where does “the world breaks everyone” come from?

It comes from A Farewell to Arms, Book Four, Chapter 34. The novel's exact wording begins, “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” The page keeps “every one” as the 1929 text prints it and credits the meditation to Frederic Henry's narration.

Did Hemingway say “courage is grace under pressure”?

He is reliably reported using the phrase, but not in that exact sentence. Dorothy Parker's 1929 New Yorker profile describes someone asking what Hemingway meant by “guts”; Parker reports his reply as “grace under pressure.” The common courage sentence is a later compression of that exchange.

Did Hemingway say “the first draft of anything is shit”?

Only at second hand. The sentence comes from Arnold Samuelson's 1984 memoir With Hemingway, reporting a 1934 conversation. Nothing in Hemingway's own books or letters contains it, so it stands as reported speech, not a verified Hemingway sentence.

What did Hemingway actually say about writing?

His documented advice emphasized routine, revision, and attempting something new. In The Paris Review he described writing after first light and rewriting each day. In his 1954 Nobel speech he said each book should be a new beginning and called writing, at its best, a lonely life.

References

References

The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.

  1. 1Ernest Hemingway: Nobel Banquet speech

    Official record
    Nobel Foundation, 10 December 1954, 1954
    Used for

    Official record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.

    View source

  2. 2Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21

    Periodical
    The Paris Review, Issue 18, Spring 1958, 1958
    Used for

    Contemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Ernest Hemingway.

    View source

  3. 3Hemingway's Letters: transcript

    Archive
    JFK35 podcast, Season 12, 2024
    Used for

    Archival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Ernest Hemingway.

    View source

  4. 4The Artist's Reward

    Periodical
    The New Yorker, 30 November 1929, 1929
    Used for

    Contemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Ernest Hemingway.

    View source

  1. 5With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba

    Memoir
    Random House, 1984
    Used for

    First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Ernest Hemingway page.

    View source

  2. 6Did Hemingway say 'write drunk, edit sober'?

    Periodical
    Writer's Digest, 20 December 2018, 2018
    Used for

    Contemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Ernest Hemingway.

    View source

  3. 7For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn

    Website
    Quote Investigator, 28 January 2013, 2013
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Ernest Hemingway page.

    View source

  4. 8A Farewell to Arms

    Novel
    Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929
    Used for

    Primary text included as part of the documented record for Ernest Hemingway.

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Why these sources are here

Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.

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Writers, books, and films — each line checked against its source.

Illustrated portrait of Ernest Hemingway

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The Ernest Hemingway profile — the work, the places, the people.

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