Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

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.

You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

But you always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall for them but don't let them ruin you.

I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.

No; that doesn't interest me.' 'That's because you never read a book about it.

I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time...

What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

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

where a man feels at home, outside of where he's born, is where he's meant to go.

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

We have very primative emotions. It's impossible not to be competitive. Spoils everything, though.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.

Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practice in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in this own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.

You don't have to destroy me. Do you? ...

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.

I am an old man who will live until I die, Anselmo said.

It's funny, I said. It's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love. Do you think so? her eyes looked flat again. I don't mean fun that way. In a way it's an enjoyable feeling. No, she said. I think it's hell on earth.

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life. You've had just as good a life as grandfather's though not as long. You've had as good a life as any because of these last days. You do not want to complain when you have been so lucky. I wish there was some way to pass on what I've learned, though.