Ernest Hemingway quotes

I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help anything.

“I know it,” Romero said. “I’m never going to die.”

“My God!” said Brett, “the things a woman goes through.”

I looked and saw her coming through the crowd in the square, walking, her head up, as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor, and she found it pleasant and amusing.

“I’m damned bad for a religious atmosphere,” Brett said. “I’ve the wrong type of face.”

It was all so slow and so controlled. It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep.

“Some people have God,” I said. “Quite a lot.”

“I’m going back to Mike.” I could feel her crying as I held her close. “He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful. He’s my sort of thing.”

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason.

“Where are the foreigners?” Robert Cohn asked. “We’re the foreigners,” Bill said.

He always bets when he is angered, and so he usually bets foolishly.

“Direct action,” said Bill. “It beats legislation.”

Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave.

That would be different. It’s my fault, Jake. It’s the way I’m made.

You haven’t any values. You’re dead, that’s all.

Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could forgive anything.

Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger.

People take a boy like that. They don’t know what he’s worth. They don’t know what he means. Any foreigner can flatter him. They start this Grand Hotel business, and in one year they’re through.

Walking across the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre.

You were the only friend I had, and I loved Brett so.

A big horn wound. All for fun. Just for fun. What do you think of that?

Pernod is greenish imitation absinthe. When you add water it turns milky. It tastes like licorice and it has a good uplift, but it drops you just as far.

You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.

The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney’s statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base.

‘We might as well go to the Closerie,’ Brett said. ‘I can’t drink these rotten brandies.’