Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.

I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

Man is not made for defeat.

But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

Where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.

She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things

I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?

When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.

By guts I mean, grace under pressure

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

He's so damned nice and he's so awful. He's my sort of thing.

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

Please do it your own way. Do it in the mornings when your mind is cold Do it in the evenings when everything is sold. Do it in the springtime when springtime isn't there Do it in the winter We know winter well Do it on very hot days Try doing it in hell. Trade bed for a pencil Trade sorrow for a page No work it out your own way Have good luck at your age.

Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

You're awfully dark, brother, he said. You don't know how dark.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

That in some way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his body

Work could cure almost anything

Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart and artless fart in the home.