Ernest Hemingway Quotes

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

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

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete.

Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates.

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

However you make your living is where your talent lies.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?

Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I though, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.

Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it.

I heard the drums coming down the street and then the fifes and the pipes and then they came around the corner, all dancing. The street full of them. Maera saw him and then I saw him. When they stopped the music for the crouch he hunched down in the street with them all and when they started it again he jumped up and went dancing down the street with them. He was drunk all right. 'You go down after him', said Maera, 'he hates me'.

'You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.'
'Yes.'
'It's sort of what we have instead of God.'