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A Writer's Problem Does Not Change. He Himself Changes And The World He Lives In Changes But His Problem Remains The Same. It Is Always How To Write Truly And Having Found What Is True, To Project It Is Such A Way That It Becomes A Part Of The Experience Of The Person Who Reads It.

-Ernest Hemingway

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A Writer's Problem Does

Ernest Hemingway

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A Writer's Problem Does Not Change. He Himself Changes And The World He Lives In Changes But His Problem Remains The Same. It Is Always How To Write Truly And Having Found What Is True, To Project It Is Such A Way That It Becomes A Part Of The Experience Of The Person Who Reads It.

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More From Ernest Hemingway

Summer Is A Discouraging Time To Work - You Don't Feel Death Coming On The Way It Does In The Fall When The Boys Really Put Pen To Paper.

Do Not Worry. You Have Always Written Before And You Will Write Now.

He Saw The Girl Watching Him And He Smiled At Her. It Was An Old Smile That He Had Been Using For Fifty Years, Ever Since He First Smiled.

When Things Are Going Well, I Like To Have People To Share It With. I've Been Alone In Troubled Times, And I Don't Mind That. Some Things Have To Be Endured Alone. As Hemingway Said, The Human Being Is Strong In All The Broken Places.

What Is Moral Is What You Feel Good After.

Ethics And Morals

To Hell With The Church When It Becomes A State And The Hell With The State When It Becomes A Church.

There Is Nothing To Writing. All You Do Is Sit Down At A Typewriter And Bleed.

The Clouds Were Building Up Now For The Trade Wind And He Looked Ahead And Saw A Flight Of Wild Ducks Etching Themselves Against The Sky Over The Water, Then Blurring, Then Etching Again And He Knew No Man Was Ever Alone On The Sea.

Often A Man Wishes To Be Alone And A Girl Wishes To Be Alone Too And If They Love Each Other They Are Jealous Of That In Each Other, But I Can Truly Say We Never Felt That. We Could Feel Alone When We Were Together, Alone Against The Others. But We Were Never Lonely And Never Afraid When We Were Together.

There Is Nothing Else Than Now. There Is Neither Yesterday, Certainly, Nor Is There Any Tomorrow. How Old Must You Be Before You Know That? There Is Only Now, And If Now Is Only Two Days, Then Two Days Is Your Life And Everything In It Will Be In Proportion. This Is How You Live A Life In Two Days. And 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.

You Must Be Prepared To Work Always Without Applause.

It Is Appearances, Characteristics And Performance That Make A Man Love An Airplane, And They, Are What Put Emotion Into One. You Love A Lot Of Things If You Live Around Them, But There Isn't Any Woman And There Isn't Any Horse, Nor Any Before Nor Any After, That Is As Lovely As A Great Airplane, And Men Who Love Them Are Faithful To Them Even Though They Leave Them For Others. A Man Has Only One Virginity To Lose In Fighters, And If It Is A Lovely Plane He Loses It To, There His Heart Will Ever Be.

Got Tight Last Night On Absinthe And Did Knife Tricks. Great Success Shooting The Knife Underhand Into The Piano. The Woodworms Are So Bad And Eat Hell Out Of All The Furniture That You Can Always Claim The Woodworms Did It.

Remember Everything Is Right Until It's Wrong. You'll Know When It's Wrong.

Remembers Everything

You Belong To Me And All Paris Belongs To Me And I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

Out Of All The Things You Could Not Have There Were Some Things That You Could Have And One Of Those Was To Know When You Were Happy And To Enjoy All Of It While It Was There And It Was Good.

Because We Would Not Wear Any Clothes Because It Was So Hot And The Windows Open And The Swallows Flying Over The Roofs Of The Houses And When It Was Dark Afterward And You Went To The Window Very Small Bats Hunting Over The Houses And Close Down Over The Trees And We Would Drink Capri And The Door Locked And It Hot And Only A Sheet And The Whole Night And We Would Both Love Each Other All Night In The Hot Night In Milan. That Was How It Ought To Be.

'safety', The Wife Of Pablo Said. 'there Is No Such Thing As Safety. There Are So Many Seeking Safety Here Now That They Make A Great Danger. In Seeking Safety Now You Lose All.'

I Would Not Have Thought Of Eating A Meal Without Drinking A Beer.

The First And Final Thing You Have To Do In This World Is To Last It And Not Be Smashed By It.

When You Go To War As A Boy You Have A Great Illusion Of Immortality. Other People Get Killed; Not You. . . . Then When You Are Badly Wounded The First Time You Lose That Illusion And You Know It Can Happen To You. After Being Severely Wounded Two Weeks Before My Nineteenth Birthday I Had A Bad Time Until I Figured Out That Nothing Could Happen To Me That Had Not Happened To All Men Before Me. Whatever I Had To Do Men Had Always Done. If They Had Done It Then I Could Do It Too And The Best Thing Was Not To Worry About It.

The Good Parts Of A Book May Be Only Something A Writer Is Lucky Enough To Overhear Or It May Be The Wreck Of His Whole Damn Life - And One Is As Good As Another.

I've Been In Love (truly) With Five Women, The Spanish Republic And The 4th Infantry Division.

Infantry Division

Never Confuse Movement With Action.

Now, Being In Africa, I Was Hungry For More Of It, The Changes Of The Seasons, The Rains With No Need To Travel, The Discomforts That You Paid To Make It Real, The Names Of The Trees, Of The Small Animals, And All The Birds, To Know The Language And Have Time To Be In It And To Move Slowly.

The World Is A Fine Place And Worth The Fighting For And I Hate Very Much To Leave It.

I Loved You When I Saw You Today And I Loved You Always But I Never Saw You Before.

When You Have Shot One Bird Flying You Have Shot All Birds Flying. They Are All Different And They Fly In Different Ways But The Sensation Is The Same And The Last One Is As Good As The First.

Wonder What Day God Created The Egg' 'how Should We Know? We Should Not Question. Our Stay On Earth Is Not For Long. Let Us Rejoice And Believe And Give Thanks'. 'eat A Egg

You've Such A Lovely Temperature.

I Have Noticed That Doctors Who Fail In The Practice Of Medicine Have A Tendency To Seek One Another's Company And Aid In Consultation.

Practice Of Medicine

Farewell To Arms

Ronda Is The Place Where To Go, If You Are Planning To Travel To Spain For A Honeymoon Or For Being With A Girlfriend. The Whole City And Its Surroundings Are A Romantic Set. ... Nice Promenades, Good Wine, Excellent Food, Nothing To Do.

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.

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.

Every Day Is A New Day. It Is Better To Be Lucky. But I Would Rather Be Exact. Then When Luck Comes You Are Ready.

When I Am Working On A Book Or A Story I Write Every Morning As Soon After First Light As Possible. There Is No One To Disturb You And It Is Cool Or Cold And You Come To Your Work And Warm As You Write.

They Were Beaten To Start With. They Were Beaten When They Took Them From Their Farms And Put Them In The Army. That Is Why The Peasant Has Wisdom, Because He Is Defeated From The Start. Put Him In Power And See How Wise He Is.

The Story Was Writing Itself And I Was Having A Hard Time Keeping Up With It.

The Things Of The Night Cannot Be Explained In The Day, Because They Do Not Then Exist.

In The Morning There Was A Big Wind Blowing And The Waves Were Running High Up On The Beach And He Was Awake A Long Time Before He Remembered That His Heart Was Broken.

When You Start To Live Outside Yourself, It's All Dangerous.

Look At Things And Listen And Feel.

All You Have To Do Is Write One True Sentence. Write The Truest Sentence That You Know.

The Way To Learn Whether A Person Is Trustworthy Is To Trust Him.

I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

Night Is Always Darker Before The Dawn And Life Is The Same, The Hard Times Will Pass, Every Thing Will Get Better And Sun Will Shine Brighter Then Ever.

There Are Some Things Which Cannot Be Learned Quickly, And Time, Which Is All We Have, Must Be Paid Heavily For Their Acquiring.

Acquiring Things

A Bottle Of Wine Was Good Company.

Wars Are Spinach. Life In General Is The Tough Part. In War All You Have To Do Is Not Worry And Know How To Read A Map And Co-ordinates.

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.

Everything Is On Such A Clear Financial Basis In France. It Is The Simplest Country To Live In. No One Makes Things Complicated By Becoming Your Friend For Any Obscure Reason. If You Want People To Like You You Have Only To Spend A Little Money. I Spent A Little Money And The Waiter Liked Me. He Appreciated My Valuable Qualities. He Would Be Glad To See Me, And Would Want Me At His Table. It Would Be A Sincere Liking Because It Would Have A Sound Basis. I Was Back In France.

Not The Why But The What.

Life Breaks Us All But In The End We Are Stronger In The Broken Places.

When I Am Working On A Book Or A Story I Write Every Morning As Soon After First Light As Possible. There Is No One To Disturb You And It Is Cool Or Cold And You Come To Your Work And Warm As You Write. . . .when You Stop You Are As Empty, And At The Same Time Never Empty But Filling, As When You Have E Made Love To Someone You Love. Nothing Can Hurt You, Nothing Can Happen, Nothing Means Anything Until The Next Day When You Do It Again. It Is The Wait Until The Next Day That Is Hard To Get Through.

The Writer's Job Is To Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

I Kissed Her Hard And Held Her Tight And Tried To Open Her Lips; They Were Closed Tight.

They Can't Yank A Novelist Like They Can A Pitcher. A Novelist Has To Go The Full Nine, Even If It Kills Him.

I Was A Little Drunk. Not Drunk In Any Positive Sense But Just Enough To Be Careless.

It Is A Hell Of A Thing To Be Hungry In Your Own House.

Religion Is The Opium Of The Poor.

There Are Only Two Places In The World Where We Can Live Happy: At Home And In Paris.

Once In Africa I Lost The Corkscrew And We Were Forced To Live Off Food And Water For Weeks.

You Love A Lot Of Things If You Live Around Them, But There Isn't Any Woman And There Isn't Any Horse, Nor Any Before Nor Any After, That Is As Lovely As A Great Airplane.

They Arrested Us After Breakfast.

In Modern War... You Will Die Like A Dog For No Good Reason.

Everyone Behaves Badly--given The Chance.

Pound's Crazy. All Poets Are.... They Have To Be. You Don't Put A Poet Like Pound In The Loony Bin.

There Are Worse Places To Be Than On Your Own.

I Always Worked Until I Had Something Done And I Always Stopped When I Knew What Was Going To Happen Next. That Way I Could Be Sure Of Going On The Next Day.

Perhaps Wars Weren't Won Anymore. Maybe They Went On Forever. Maybe It Was Another Hundred Years' War.

I Always Rewrite Each Day Up To The Point Where I Stopped. When It Is All Finished, Naturally You Go Over It. You Get Another Chance To Correct And Rewrite When Someone Else Types It, And You See It Clean In Type. The Last Chance Is In The Proofs. You're Grateful For These Different Chances.

Il Faut D'abord Durer (first One Must Endure).

You're Going To Write Straight And Simple And Good Now. That's The Start.''what If I'm Not Straight And Simple And Good? Do You Think I Can Write That Way?''write How You Are But Make It Straight.

I Say That Is Wine," Brett Held Up Her Glass. "we Ought To Toast Something. 'here's To Royalty.'" "this Wine Is Too Good For Toast-drinking, My Dear. You Don't Want To Mix Emotions Up With A Wine Like That. You Lose The Taste." Brett's Glass Was Empty.

I Am Like A Blind Pig When I Work.

And You'll Always Love Me Won't You? Yes And The Rain Won't Make Any Difference? No

Farewell To Arms

I Might Say That What Amateurs Call A Style Is Usually Only The Unavoidable Awkwardnesses In First Trying To Make Something That Has Not Heretofore Been Made.

Those Who Say They Want To Be Writers, And Aren’t Writing, Don’t.

When We Came Back To Paris It Was Clear And Cold And Lovely.

And If There Is Not Any Such Thing As A Long Time, Nor The Rest Of Your Lives, Nor From Now On, But There Is Only Now, Why Then Now Is The Thing To Praise And I Am Very Happy With It.

Rest Of Your Life

Any Man's Life, Told Truly, Is A Novel.

Never Go On Trips With Anyone You Do Not Love.

All Modern American Literature Comes From One Book By Mark Twain Called Huckleberry Finn.

Religion Is Like An Ice Cold Whiskey On A Hot Day.

I Am Glad We Do Not Have To Try To Kill The Stars.

There Is No Lonelier Man In Death, Except The Suicide, Than That Man Who Has Lived Many Years With A Good Wife And Then Outlived Her. If Two People Love Each Other There Can Be No Happy End To It.

No Weapon Has Ever Settled A Moral Problem. It Can Impose A Solution But It Cannot Guarantee It To Be A Just One.

He Knew He Would Not Be Afraid. Even If He Ever Was Afraid He Knew That He Could Do It Anyway.

If The Wind Rises It Can Push Us Against The Flood When It Comes.

However You Make Your Living Is Where Your Talent Lies.

The Best Way Is Always To Stop When You Are Going Good And When You Know What Will Happen Next. If You Do That Every Day When You Are Writing A Novel You Will Never Be Stuck. That Is The Most Valuable Thing I Can Tell You So Try To Remember It.

A Man Does Not Exist Until He Is Drunk.

Shooting Gives Me A Good Feeling. It Is Faster Than Baseball And You Are Out On One Strike.

I Love You For All That You Are, All That You Have Been, All That You're Yet To Be.

Every Man's Life Ends The Same Way. It Is Only The Details Of How He Lived And How He Died That Distinguish One Man From Another.

No Pilar," Agustin Said. "you Are Not Smart. You Are Brave. You Are Loyal. You Have Decision. You Have Intuition. Much Decision And Much Heart. But You Are Not Smart.

I Have Watched Them All Day And They Are The Same Men That We Are. I Believe That I Could Walk Up To The Mill And Knock On The Door And I Would Be Welcome Except That They Have Orders To Challenge All Travelers And Ask To See Their Papers. It Is Only Orders That Come Between Us. Those Men Are Not Fascists. I Call Them So, But They Are Not. They Are Poor Men As We Are. They Should Never Be Fighting Against Us And I Do Not Like To Think Of The Killing.

Everyone Has His Own Conscience, And There Should Be No Rules About How A Conscience Should Function.

Writing And Travel Broaden Your Ass If Not Your Mind And I Like To Write Standing Up.

I Do Not Know What I Thought Paris Would Be Like, But It Was Not That Way. It Rained Nearly Every Day.

Everything About Him Was Old Except His Eyes And They Were The Same Color As The Sea And Were Cheerful And Undefeated.

Nobody Knows What's In Him Until He Tries To Pull It Out. If There's Nothing, Or Very Little, The Shock Can Kill A Man.

Always Stop For The Day While You Still Know What Will Happen Next.

There's No One Thing That's True. It's All True.

Time Is The Least Thing We Have.

Wine Is One Of The Most Civilized Things In The World And One Of The Most Natural Things Of The World That Has Been Brought To The Greatest Perfection, And It Offers A Greater Range For Enjoyment And Appreciation Than, Possibly, Any Other Purely Sensory Thing.

To Hell With Luck. I'll Bring The Luck With Me.

You Make Something From Things That Have Happened And From Things That Exist And From All Things That You Know And All Those You Cannot Know, And You Make Something Through Your Invention That Is Truer Than Anything True And Alive, And If You Make It Well Enough, You Give It Immortality.

Thou Wilt Go Now, Rabbit. But I Go With Thee. As Long As There Is One Of Us There Is Both Of Us.

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

Optimism Can Keep A Fool From Accepting Failure.

You Expected To Be Sad In The Fall. Part Of You Died Each Year When The Leaves Fell From The Trees And Their Branches Were Bare Against The Wind And The Cold, Wintery Light. 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 Died For No Reason.

We Ate Well And Cheaply And Drank Well And Cheaply And Slept Well And Warm Together And Loved Each Other.

All You Need To Do Is Write Truly And Not Care About What The Fate Of It Is.

How Did You Go Bankrupt?" Two Ways. Gradually, Then Suddenly.

All Our Words From Loose Using Have Lost Their Edge.

Cheer Up,' I Said. 'all Countries Look Just Like The Moving Pictures.

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.

We're Always Lucky,' I Said And Like A Fool I Did Not Knock On Wood.

I've Seen You, Beauty, And You Belong To Me Now, Whoever You Are Waiting For And If I Never See You Again, I Thought. You Belong To Me And All Paris Belongs To Me And I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

Mr. Barnes, It Is Because I Have Lived Very Much That Now I Can Enjoy Everything So Well

If You Are Lucky Enough To Have Lived In Paris As A Young Man, Then Wherever You Go For The Rest Of Your Life It Stays With You, For Paris Is A Moveable Feast.

The Questioners Had That Beautiful Detachment And Devotion To Stern Justice Of Men Dealing In Death Without Being In Any Danger Of It.

The Hard Part About Writing A Novel Is Finishing It.

He No Longer Dreamed Of Storms, Nor Of Women, Nor Of Great Occurrences, Nor Of Great Fish, Nor Fights, Nor Contests Of Strength, Nor Of His Wife. He Only Dreamed Of Places Now And The Lions On The Beach. They Played Like Young Cats In The Dusk And He Loved Them As He Loved The Boy. He Never Dreamed About The Boy. He Simply Woke, Looked Out The Open Door At The Moon And Unrolled His Trousers And Put Them On.

I Spend A Hell Of A Lot Of Time Killing Animals And Fish So I Wouldn't Kill Myself. When A Man Is In Rebellion Against Death, As I Am In Rebellion Against Death, He Gets Pleasure Out Of Taking To Himself One Of The Godlike Attributes; That Of Giving It.

Why, Darling, I Don't Live At All When I'm Not With You.

Farewell To Arms

Part Of You Died Each Year When The Leaves Fell From The Trees And Their Branches Were Bare Against The Wind And The Cold, Wintry Light.

Listen," I Told Him. "don't Be So Tough So Early In The Morning. I'm Sure You've Cut Plenty Of People's Throats. I Haven't Even Had My Coffee Yet.

Before You React, Think. Before You Spend, Earn. Before You Criticize, Wait. Before You Quit, Try.

Rereading Places You At The Point Where It Has To Go On, Knowing It Is As Good As You Can Get It Up To There. There Is Always Juice Somewhere.

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.

I Would Take Anything I Love And Throw It Off The Highest Cliff You Ever Saw And Not Wait To Hear It Bounce.

It Is Good That We Do Not Have To Try To Kill The Sun Or The Moon Or The Stars. It Is Enough To Live On The Sea And Kill Our True Brothers.

A Continent Ages Quickly Once We Come. The Natives Live In Harmony With It. But The Foreigner Destroys, Cuts Down The Trees, Drains The Water, So That The Water Supply Is Altered, And In A Short Time The Soil, Once The Sod Is Turned Under, Is Cropped Out And, Next, It Starts To Blow Away As It Has Blown Away In Every Old Country And As I Had Seen It Start To Blow In Canada. The Earth Gets Tired Of Being Exploited.

All My Life I've Looked At Words As Though I Were Seeing Them For The First Time.

I Know War As Few Other Men Now Living Know It, And Nothing To Me Is More Revolting. I Have Long Advocated Its Complete Abolition, As Its Very Destructiveness On Both Friend And Foe Has Rendered It Useless As A Method Of Settling International Disputes.

This Was The Price You Paid For Sleeping Together. This Was The End Of The Trap. This Was What People Got For Loving Each Other.

The English Talked With Inflected Phrases. One Phrase To Mean Everything.

I Am Opposed To Writing About The Private Lives Of Living Authors And Psychoanalyzing Them While They Are Alive. Criticism Is Getting All Mixed Up With A Combination Of The Junior Fbi-men, Discards From Freud And Jung And A Sort Of Columnist Peep-hole And Missing Laundry List School. ... Every Young English Professor Sees Gold In Them Dirty Sheets Now. Imagine What They Can Do With The Soiled Sheets Of Four Legal Beds By The Same Writer And You Can See Why Their Tongues Are Slavering.

Never Mistake Motion For Action.

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.

The Best People Possess A Feeling For Beauty, The Courage To Take Risks, The Discipline To Tell The Truth, The Capacity For Sacrifice. Ironically, Their Virtues Make Them Vulnerable; They Are Often Wounded, Sometimes Destroyed.

Enjoying Living Was Learning To Get Your Money's Worth And Knowing When You Had It.

That Seemed To Handle It. That Was It. Send A Girl Off With One Man. Introduce Her To Another To Go Off With Him. Now Go And Bring Her Back. And Sign The Wire With Love. That Was It All Right. I Went In To Lunch.

Romance Was A Game, Like Bridge, In Which You Said Things Instead Of Playing Cards. Like Bridge You Had To Pretend You Were Playing For Money Or Playing For Some Stakes.

Everything Is Your Fault If You're Any Damn Good.

I'm Not Advocating The Strenuous Life For Everyone Or Trying To Say It's The Choice Form Of Life. Anyone Who's Had The Luck Or Misfortune To Be An Athlete Has To Keep His Body In Shape. The Body And Mind Are Closely Coordinated. Fattening Of The Body Can Lead To Fattening Of The Mind. I Would Be Tempted To Say That It Can Lead To Fattening Of The Soul, But I Don't Know Anything About The Soul.

You Are All A Lost Generation. [with Credit To Gertrude Stein]

Prose Is Architecture, Not Interior Decoration, And The Baroque Is Over.

To Be Successful In Writing, Use Short Sentences.

Until You're Grown-up They Send You To Reform School. After You're Grown-up They Send You To The Penitentiary.

Never Mistake Motive For Action.

Everybody Is Friends When Things Are Bad Enough.

Before We Take To The Sea, We Walk On Land. . . Before We Create, We Must Understand. . .

The Ocean Is Worth Writing About Just As Man Is.

It Was Strange How Easy Being Tired Enough Made It.

Develop A Built-in Bullshit Detector.

Auto Racing, Bull Fighting, And Mountain Climbing Are The Only Real Sports... All The Others Are Games.

Everything That's Innocent To Us Is Crazy To Them.

And This Was The Price You Paid For Sleeping Together.

Sleeping Together

Now A Writer Can Make Himself A Nice Career While He Is Alive By Espousing A Political Cause, Working For It, Making A Profession Of Believing In It, And If It Wins He Will Be Very Well Placed. All Politics Is A Matter Of Working Hard Without Reward, Or With A Living Wage For A Time, In The Hope Of Booty Later. A Man Can Be A Fascist Or A Communist And If His Outfit Gets In He Can Get To Be An Ambassador Or Have A Million Copies Of His Books Printed By The Government Or Any Of The Other Rewards The Boys Dream About.

Imagination? It Is The One Thing Beside Honesty That A Good Writer Must Have. The More He Learns From Experience The More He Can Imagine.

The Only Decent Bone In Her Body Was Mine.

When I Am Working On A Book Or A Story I Write Every Morning As Soon After First Light As Possible. There Is No One To Disturb You And Is It Is Cool And You Come To Your Work And Warm As You Write. You Read What You Have Written And, As You Always Stop When You Know What Is Going To Happen Next, You Go On From There. You Write Until You Come To A Place Where You Still Have Your Juice And Know What Will Happen Next And You Stop And Try To Live Through Until The Next Day When You Hit Again.

No Animal Has More Liberty Than The Cat, But It Buries The Mess It Makes. The Cat Is The Best Anarchist.

There Isn't Any Me. I'm You. Don't Make Up A Separate Me.

Farewell To Arms

Though There Is One Part Of Writing That Is Solid And You Do It No Harm By Talking About It, The Other Is Fragile, And If You Talk About It, The Structure Cracks And You Have Nothing.

Poor Faulkner. Does He Really Think Big Emotions Come From Big Words?

If He Wrote It, He Could Get Rid Of It. He Had Gotten Rid Of Many Things By Writing Them.

Got Tight On Absinthe Last Night. Did Knife Tricks.

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.

There Is No Friend As Loyal As A Book.

No Well-run Yacht Basin In Southern Waters Is Complete Without At Least Two Sun-burned, Salt Bleached-headed Esthonians Who Are Waiting For A Check From Their Last Article. When It Comes They Will Set Sail To Another Yacht Basin And Write Another Saga.

Things May Not Be Immediately Discernible In What A Man Writes, And In This Sometimes He Is Fortunate; But Eventually They Are Quite Clear And By These And The Degree Of Alchemy That He Possesses He Will Endure Or Be Forgotten.

He's A Great Writer. If I Didn't Think So I Wouldn't Have Tried To Kill Him... I Was The Champ And When I Read His Stuff I Knew He Had Something. So I Dropped A Heavy Glass Skylight On His Head At A Drinking Party. But You Can't Kill The Guy. He's Not Human.

I Do Not Need To Get Used To Your Silence. I Already Know It. I Quite Possibly Love All Of It.

If You're Looking For Messages, Try Western Union.

After Writing A Story I Was Always Empty And Both Sad And Happy, As Though I Had Made Love.

For Him It Was A Dark Passage Which Led To Nowhere, Then To Nowhere, Then Again To Nowhere, Once Again To Nowhere, Always And Forever To Nowhere, Heavy On The Elbows In The Earth To Nowhere, Dark, Never Any End To Nowhere, Hung On All Time Always To Unknowing Nowhere, This Time And Again For Always To Nowhere, Now Not To Be Borne Once Again Always And To Nowhere, Now Beyond All Bearing Up, Up, Up And Into Nowhere, Suddenly, Scaldingly, Holdingly All Nowhere Gone And Time Absolutely Still And They Were Both There, Time Having Stopped And He Felt The Earth Move Out And Away From Under Them.

The Further You Go In Writing The More Alone You Are.

I Never Knew Of A Morning In Africa When I Woke That I Was Not Happy.

You Are Killing Me, Fish, The Old Man Thought. But You Have A Right To. Never Have I Seen A Greater, Or More Beautiful, Or A Calmer Or More Noble Thing Than You, Brother.

I Am An Old Man Who Will Live Until I Die," Anselmo Said.

Nobody Climbs On Skis Now And Almost Everybody Breaks Their Legs But Maybe It Is Easier In The End To Break Your Legs Than To Break Your Heart Although They Say That Everything Breaks Now And That Sometimes, Afterwards, Many Are Stronger At The Broken Places.

There Isnt Always An Explanation For Everything.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Unbought Stuffed Dogs.

An Aggressive War Is The Great Crime Against Everything Good In The World. A Defensive War, Which Must Necessarily Turn To Aggressive At The Earliest Moment, Is The Necessary Great Counter-crime. But Never Think That War, No Matter How Necessary, Nor How Justified, Is Not A Crime. Ask The Infantry And Ask The Dead.

I Drink To Make Other People More Interesting.

I Might Say That What Amateurs Call A Style Is Usually Only The Unavoidable Awkwardnesses In First Trying To Make Something That Has Not Heretofore Been Made. Almost No New Classics Resemble Other Previous Classics. At First People See Only The Awkwardness. Then They Are Not So Perceptible. When They Show So Very Awkwardly People Think These Awkwardnesses Are The Style And Many Copy Them. This Is Regrettable.

Madame, All Stories, If Continued Far Enough, End In Death, And He Is No True-story Teller Who Would Keep That From You.

Cowardice, As Distinguished From Panic, Is Almost Always Simply A Lack Of Ability To Suspend The Functioning Of The Imagination. Learning To Suspend Your Imagination And Live Completely In The Very Second Of The Present With No Before And No After Is The Greatest Gift A Soldier Can Acquire.

How Did We Go Bankrupt? Two Ways. Slowly, And Then All Of A Sudden.

By Then I Knew That Everything Good And Bad Left An Emptiness When It Stopped. But If It Was Bad, The Emptiness Filled Up By Itself. If It Was Good You Could Only Fill It By Finding Something Better.

Dying Is A Very Simple Thing. I've Looked At Death And Really I Know. If I Should Have Died It Would Have Been Very Easy For Me. Quite The Easiest Thing I Ever Did. But The People At Home Do Not Realize That. They Suffer A Thousand Times More.

Why Do Old Men Wake So Early? Is It To Have One Longer Day?

There Will Always Be People Who Say It Does Not Exist Because They Cannot Have It. But I Tell You It Is True And That You Have It And That You Are Lucky Even If You Die Tomorrow.

One Cat Just Leads To Another." [letter From Finca Vigia, Cuba, To His First Wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

Love Is Infinitely More Endurable Than Hate.

If The Reader Prefers, This Book May Be Regarded As Fiction. But There Is Always The Chance That Such A Book Of Fiction May Throw Some Light On What Has Been Written As Fact.

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