Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Personal columnists ... are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat — no matter who killed the meat for him.

The way to learn whether a person is trustworthy is to trust him.

I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.

No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across — not to just depict life — or criticize it — but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.

You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it. Doesn’t it sound lovely beyond belief?

The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

I think perhaps I can too.
But I try not to borrow.
First you borrow. Then you beg.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

I’ll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters.

It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.

We’ll wait and see. Come on back in the shade, he said. You mustn’t feel that way.
I don’t feel any way, the girl said. I just know things.
I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do——
Nor that isn’t good for me, she said. I know. Could we have another beer?
All right. But you’ve got to realize——
I realize, the girl said. Can’t we maybe stop talking?
They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table. You’ve got to realize, he said, that I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.
Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.
Of course it does. But I don’t want anybody but you. I don’t want any one else. And I know it’s perfectly simple.
Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple.
It’s all right for you to say that, but I do know it.
Would you do something for me now?
I’d do anything for you.
Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.