The faces that were young once were old as mine but everyone remembered how we were. The eyes had not changed and nobody was fat. No mouths were bitter no matter what the eyes had seen. Bitter lines around the mouth are the first sign of defeat. Nobody was defeated.

It is July 1959 and Hemingway is in Marceliano's bar in Pamplona, where he has not been since before the Spanish Civil War. In the following paragraph Hemingway mentions for contrast an unpleasant American journalist in his early twenties whose 'handsome young face already showed the traced lines of bitterness around the upper lips.'