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.

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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

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I am always in love.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

Work could cure almost anything

I wanted it so much. I don’t know why I wanted it so much.

Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?... The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best — make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

'But I get so hungry,' she said. 'Is it normal do you think? Do you always get so hungry when you make love?'
'When you love somebody.'

There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.

Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it — don't cheat with it.

Be humble after but not during the action.

Anyone who goes on the sea the year around in a small power boat does not seek danger. You may be absolutely sure that in a year you will have it without seeking, so you try always to avoid it all you can.

They started two hours before daylight, and at first, it was not necessary to break the ice across the canal as other boats had gone on ahead. In each boat, in the darkness, so you could not see, but only hear him, the poler stood in the stern, with his long oar. The shooter sat on a shooting stool fastened to the top of a box that contained his lunch and shells, and the shooter's two, or more, guns were propped against the load of wooden decoys. Somewhere, in each boat, there was a sack with one or two live mallard hens, or a hen and a drake, and in each boat there was a dog who shifted and shivered uneasily at the sound of the wings of the ducks that passed overhead in the darkness.