207 quotes
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn't.
I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
Reporting (1964)
"Just kiss me."
She kissed him on the cheek.
"No."
"Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go."
"Look, turn thy head" and then their mouths were tight together.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people. Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England. I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have.
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
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.
Islands in the Stream (1970)
This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.
True at First Light (1999)
But that story has in it the only constructive thing I ever learned about women - that no matter what happened to them and how they turned, you should try to disregard all that and remember them only as they were on the best day they ever had.
Papa Hemingway (1966)
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.
Paris Review interview (1958)
I know monks masturbate at night
That pet cats screw
That some girls bite
And yet
What can I do
To set things right?
The Earnest Liberal's Lament (1924)
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.
Every day above earth is a good day.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is — but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit.
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.
Notes on the Next War (1935)
Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
[T]he rain was making the finest sound that we, who live much outside of houses, ever hear.
Green Hills of Africa (1935)
You did not do so badly for something that is worthless. But there was a time when I could not find you.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, "What will you have, sir?" And I said, "A glass of hemlock."
Papa Hemingway (1966)
I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever...Those who have entered it honorably, and no man ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality.