Ernest Hemingway Quotes

American author and journalist (1899–1961)

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Ernest Miller Hemingway (21 July 1899 – 2 July 1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Portrait adapted from: Wikimedia Commons, Lloyd Arnold (Public domain / CC0)

Native Name: Ernest Miller Hemingway

Also Known As: Papa

Alternative Names: Hemingway • Ernest Miller Hemmingway • E. M. Hemmingway • E. Hemmingway • E. Hemingway • Ernest M. Hemingway

From Wikidata (CC0)

Engraved portrait of Ernest Hemingway, facing right

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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?

"Blood is thicker than water,"
The young man said
As he knifed his friend
For a drooling old bitch
And a house full of lies.

But after I got them to leave 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.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea...

I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.

Never mistake motion for action.

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

Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people.

The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do - and makes you what you are - is to back up into the grave.

I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is that quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. Its half atheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like Lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to any more. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknose love.