Ernest Hemingway
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
Ernest HemingwayNever mistake motion for action.
Ernest HemingwayThere are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
Ernest HemingwaySwitzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo style of architecture.
Ernest HemingwayTo me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.
Ernest HemingwayThere is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
Ernest HemingwayHappiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest HemingwayThere are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Ernest HemingwayEvery man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
Ernest HemingwayUnlike all other forms of lute or combat the conditions are that the winner shall take nothing; neither his ease, nor his pleasure, nor any notions of glory; nor, if he wins far enough, shall there be any reward within himself.
Ernest HemingwayFor a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest HemingwaySurvival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.
Ernest HemingwayI 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.
Ernest HemingwayIn order to write about life, first you must live it!
Ernest HemingwayThe world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
Ernest HemingwayI am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We are born lucky. Yes, we are born lucky.
Ernest HemingwayWhat is moral is what you feel good after.
Ernest HemingwayBullfighting 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 HemingwayYou know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.
Ernest HemingwayI like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
Ernest HemingwayPoor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.
Ernest HemingwayYou expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
Ernest HemingwayWriting, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
Ernest HemingwayI know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest HemingwayThat terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
Ernest Hemingway