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Dying Was Nothing And He Had No Picture Of It Nor Fear Of It In His Mind. But Living Was A Field Of Grain Blowing In The Wind On The Side Of A Hill. Living Was A Hawk In The Sky. Living Was An Earthen Jar Of Water In The Dust Of The Threshing With The Grain Flailed Out And The Chaff Blowing. Living Was A Horse Between Your Legs And A Carbine Under One Leg And A Hill And A Valley And A Stream With Trees Along It And The Far Side Of The Valley And The Hills Beyond.

-Ernest Hemingway

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Dying Was Nothing And

Ernest Hemingway

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Dying Was Nothing And He Had No Picture Of It Nor Fear Of It In His Mind. But Living Was A Field Of Grain Blowing In The Wind On The Side Of A Hill. Living Was A Hawk In The Sky. Living Was An Earthen Jar Of Water In The Dust Of The Threshing With The Grain Flailed Out And The Chaff Blowing. Living Was A Horse Between Your Legs And A Carbine Under One Leg And A Hill And A Valley And A Stream With Trees Along It And The Far Side Of The Valley And The Hills Beyond.

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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.

How Would That Premise Stand Up If He Examined It? That Was Probably Why The Communists Were Always Cracking Down On Bohemiansism. When You Were Drunk Or When You Committed Adultery You Recognised Your Own Personal Fallability Of That So Mutable Substitute For The Apostles' Creed, The Party Line. Down With Bohemianism, The Sin Of Majakowski.

You Can Write Any Time People Will Leave You Alone And Not Interrupt You. Or Rather You Can If You Will Be Ruthless Enough About It. But The Best Writing Is Certainly When You Are In Love.

Life Is The Best Left Hooker I Ever Saw, Although Some Say It Was Charlie White Of Chicago

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

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.

For Her Everything Was Red, Orange, Gold-red From The Sun On The Closed Eyes, And It All Was That Color, All Of It, The Filling, The Possessing, The Having, All Of That Color, All In A Blindness Of That Color." - Ernest Hemingway.

I Don't Like To Write Like God. It Is Only Because You Never Do It, Though, That The Critics Think You Can't Do It.

You’re My Religion. You’re All I’ve Got.

Farewell To Arms

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

The Circus Is The Only Fun You Can Buy That Is Good For You.

Wearing Down Seven Number Two Pencils Is A Good Day's Work.

Paris Is So Very Beautiful That It Satisfies Something In You That Is Always Hungry In America.

Love Is Something That Hangs Up Behind The Bathroom Door And Smells Of Lysol.

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.

And Who Understands? Not Me, Because If I Did I Would Forgive It All.

It Was Strange How Easy Being Tired Enough Made It.

Hunger Is Good Discipline.

Good Discipline

When I Have An Idea, I Turn Down The Flame, As If It Were A Little Alcohol Stove, As Low As It Will Go. Then It Explodes And That Is My Idea.

Funny Sarcastic

A Writer Should Write What He Has To Say And Not Speak It.

No Catalogue Of Horrors Ever Kept Men From War. Before The War You Always Think That It's Not You That Dies. But You Will Die, Brother, If You Go To It Long Enough.

I Was Blown Up While We Were Eating Cheese.

Farewell To Arms

Once Writing Has Become Your Major Vice And Greatest Pleasure Only Death Can Stop It. Financial Security Then Is A Great Help As It Keeps You From Worrying.

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

When Writing A Novel A Writer Should Create Living People; People Not Characters. A Character Is A Caricature.

But Sometimes When I Was Starting A New Story And I Could Not Get It Going, I Would Sit In Front Of The Fire And Squeeze The Peel Of The Little Oranges Into The Edge Of The Flame And Watch The Sputter Of Blue That They Made. I Would Stand And Look Out Over The Roofs Of Paris And Think, 'do Not Worry. 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.' So Finally I Would Write One True Sentence, And Then Go On From There.

To Me Heaven Would Be A Big Bull Ring With Me Holding Two Barrera Seats And A Trout Stream Outside That No One Else Was Allowed To Fish In And Two Lovely Houses In The Town; One Where I Would Have My Wife And Children And Be Monogamous And Love Them Truly And Well And The Other Where I Would Have My Nine Beautiful Mistresses On Nine Different Floors.

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.

When Spring Came, Even The False Spring, There Were No Problems Except Where To Be Happiest.

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

Cowardice, As Distinguished From Panic, Is Almost Always Simply A Lack Of Ability To Suspend The Functioning Of The Imagination.

The Hardest Thing To Do Is To Write Straight Honest Prose On Human Beings. First You Have To Know The Subject; Then You Have To Know How To Write. Both Take A Lifetime To Learn, And Anybody Is Cheating Who Takes Politics As A Way Out. All The Outs Are Too Easy, And The Thing Itself Is Too Hard To Do.

Writing Is The Clumsy Attempt To Find Symbols For Wordlessness.

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.

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

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.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Unbought Stuffed Dogs.

Live It Up So You Can Write It Down.

Worry A Little Bit Every Day And In A Lifetime You Will Lose A Couple Of Years. If Something Is Wrong, Fix It If You Can. But Train Yourself Not To Worry: Worry Never Fixes Anything.

You Make Your Own Luck, Gig. You Know What Makes A Good Loser? Practice.

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.

A Wine Shop Was Open And I Went In For Some Coffee. It Smelled Of Early Morning, Of Swept Dust, Spoons In Coffee-glasses And The Wet Circles Left By Wine Glasses.

The Only Thing That Can Spoil A Day Is People And If You Can Keep From Making Engagements, Every Day Has No Limits.

It Is By Riding A Bicycle That You Learn The Contours Of A Country Best, Since You Have To Sweat Up The Hills And Coast Down Them.

Riding Your Bike

I Always Like It At A War. There Is Always The Chance That You Will Get Up The Next Morning And Be Killed And Not Have To Write.

I Think You Should Learn About Writing From Everybody Who Has Ever Written That Has Anything To Teach You

Some Lived In It And Never Felt It But He Knew It All Was Nada Y Pues Nada Y Nada Y Pues Nada.

I Suppose If A Man Has Something Once, Always Something Of It Remains.

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know.

No Horse Named Morbid Ever Won A Race.

In Order To Write About Life First You Must Live It.

The Brown Blotches Of The Benevolent Skin Cancer The Sun Brings From Its Reflection On The Tropic Sea Were On His Cheeks. The Blotches Ran Well Down The Sides Of His Face And His Hands Had The Deep-creased Scars From Handling Heavy Fish On The Cords. But None Of These Scars Were Fresh. They Were As Old As Erosions In A Fishless Desert.

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

Real Seriousness In Regard To Writing Being One Of The Two Absolute Necessities. The Other, Unfortunately, Is Talent.

In A Power Hungry, Power Worshipping Society, Men Label Themselves Atheist.

It's Enough For You To Do It Once For A Few Men To Remember You. But If You Do It Year After Year, Then Many People Remember You And They Tell It To Their Children, And Their Children And Grandchildren Remember And, If It Concerns Books, They Can Read Them. And If It's Good Enough, It Will Last As Long As There Are Human Beings.

The Fools Think I Am Writing Algebra But What I Am Really Writing Is Geometry.

Hail Nothing Full Of Nothing, Nothing Is With Thee.

Luck Is A Thing That Comes In Many Forms And Who Can Recognize Her?

But Perhaps He Had Enough Animal Strength And Detached Intelligence That He Could Make Another Start.

A Writer Should Be Of As Great Probity And Honesty As A Priest Of God. He Is Either Honest Or Not, As A Woman Is Either Chaste Or Not, And After One Piece Of Dishonest Writing He Is Never The Same Again.

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

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.

You Know I Don't Love Any One But You. You Shouldn't Mind Because Some One Else Loved Me.

Farewell To Arms

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.

I Love You And I Always Will And I Am Sorry. What A Useless Word.

When I Saw Her I Was In Love With Her. Everything Turned Over Inside Of Me. She Looked Toward The Door, Saw There Was No One, Then She Sat On The Side Of The Bed And Leaned Over And Kissed Me.

This Is A Good Place," He Said. "there's A Lot Of Liquor," I Agreed.

We Have Very Primitive Emotions,” He Said . “it's Impossible Not To Be Competitive. Spoils Everything, Though.

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

All Stories, If Continued Far Enough, End In Death.

When You Give Power To An Executive You Do Not Know Who Will Be Filling That Position When The Time Of Crisis Comes.

Times Of Crisis

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.

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.

If The Book Is Good, Is About Something That You Know, And Is Truly Written, And Reading It Over You See That This Is So, You Can Let The Boys Yip And The Noise Will Have That Pleasant Sound Coyotes Make On A Very Cold Night When They Are Out In The Snow And You Are In Your Own Cabin That You Have Built Or Paid For With Your Work.

When You Love You Wish To Do Things For. You Wish To Sacrifice For. You Wish To Serve.

You Must Hold Hard To Life And Do It. But Life Is A Cheap Thing Beside A Man's Work. The Only Thing Is That You Need It. Hold It Tight.

The Only Thing That Can Ruin A Good Day Is People.

Every Day Above Earth Is A Good Day.

I Am Drunk, Seest Thou? When I Am Not Drunk I Do Not Talk. You Have Never Heard Me Talk Much. But An Intelligent Man Is Sometimes Forced To Be Drunk To Spend His Time With Fools.

If A Writer Stops Observing He Is Finished. Experience Is Communicated By Small Details Intimately Observed.

The Parody Is The Last Refuge Of The Frustrated Writer. Parodies Are What You Write When You Are Associate Editor Of The Harvard Lampoon. The Greater The Work Of Literature, The Easier The Parody. The Step Up From Writing Parodies Is Writing On The Wall Above The Urinal.

The Only Thing That Could Spoil A Day Was People. People Were Always The Limiters Of Happiness Except For The Very Few That Were As Good As Spring Itself.

I Wonder What Your Idea Of Heaven Would Be — A Beautiful Vacuum Filled With Wealthy Monogamists. All Powerful And Members Of The Best Families All Drinking Themselves To Death. And Hell Would Probably An Ugly Vacuum Full Of Poor Polygamists Unable To Obtain Booze Or With Chronic Stomach Disorders That They Called Secret Sorrows.

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

Having Books Published Is Very Destructive To Writing.

About Morals, I Know Only That What Is Moral Is What You Feel Good After And What Is Immoral Is What You Feel Bad After.

Write Hard And Clear About What Hurts.

In The Spring Mornings I Would Work Early While My Wife Still Slept. The Windows Were Open Wide And The Cobbles Of The Street Were Drying After The Rain.

Madame, It Is An Old Word And Each One Takes It New And Wears It Out Himself. It Is A Word That Fills With Meaning As A Bladder With Air And The Meaning Goes Out Of It As Quickly. It May Be Punctured As A Bladder Is Punctured And Patched And Blown Up Again And If You Have Not Had It Does Not Exist For You. All People Talk Of It, But Those Who Have Had It Are Marked By It, And I Would Not Wish To Speak Of It Further Since Of All Things It Is The Most Ridiculous To Talk Of And Only Fools Go Through It Many Times.

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

And We Could Have All This,' She Said. 'and We Could Have Everything And Every Day We Make It More Impossible.' 'what Did You Say?' 'i Said We Could Have Everything.' 'we Can Have Everything.' 'no, We Can't.' 'we Can Have The Whole World.' 'no, We Can't.' 'we Can Go Everywhere.' 'no, We Can't. It Isn't Ours Anymore.' 'it's Ours.' 'no, It Isn't. And Once They Take It Away, You Never Get It Back.

Never Think That War, No Matter How Necessary, Nor How Justified, Is Not A Crime.

You Did Not Kill The Fish Only To Keep Alive And To Sell For Food, He Thought. You Killed Him For Pride And Because You Are A Fisherman. You Loved Him When He Was Alive And You Loved Him After. If You Love Him, It Is Not A Sin To Kill Him. Or Is It More?

There Are Many Who Do Not Know They Are Fascists But Will Find It Out When The Time Comes.

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 ... You Will Never Be Stuck. Always Stop While You Are Going Good And Don't Think About It Or Worry About It Until You Start To Write The Next Day. That Way Your Subconscious Will Work On It All The Time. But If You Think About It Consciously Or Worry About It You Will Kill It And Your Brain Will Be Tired Before You Start.

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

A Good Life Is Not Measured By Any Biblical Span.

The First Draft Of Anything Is Sh*t.

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.

The Bicycle Riders Drank Much Wine, And Were Burned And Browned By The Sun. They Did Not Take The Race Seriously Except Among Themselves.

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.

It's Silly Not To Hope. It's A Sin He Thought.

The First And Most Important Thing Of All, At Least For Writers Today, Is To Strip Language Clean, To Lay It Bare Down To The Bone.

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

I Thought That All Generations Were Lost By Something And Always Had Been And Always Would Be

I Didn't Want To Kiss You Goodbye — That Was The Trouble — I Wanted To Kiss You Good Night — And There's A Lot Of Difference.

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.

Show The Readers Everything, Tell Them Nothing.

To Have Come On All This New World Of Writing, With Time To Read In A City Like Paris Where There Was A Way Of Living Well And Working, No Matter How Poor You Were, Was Like Having A Great Treasure Given To You.

This Beer Is Good For You. This Is Draft Beer. Stick With The Beer. Let's Go And Beat This Guy Up And Come Back And Drink Some More Beer.

I Try Not To Borrow, First You Borrow Then You Beg.

One Cat Just Leads To Another. The Place Is So Damned Big It Doesn't Really Seem As Though There Were Many Cats Until You See Them All Moving Like A Mass Migration At Feeding Time.

Now He Would Never Write The Things That He Had Saved To Write Until He Knew Enough To Write Them Well. Well, He Would Not Have To Fail At Trying To Write Them Either. Maybe You Could Never Write Them, And That Was Why You Put Them Off And Delayed The Starting. Well He Would Never Know, Now.

Procrastination

Write As Well As You Can And Finish What You Start.

If You Have A Success, You Have It For The Wrong Reasons. If You Become Popular It Is Always Because Of The Worst Aspects Of Your Work.

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.

'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.'

You Know That Fiction, Prose Rather, Is Possibly The Roughest Trade Of All In Writing. You Do Not Have The Reference, The Old Important Reference. You Have The Sheet Of Blank Paper, The Pencil, And The Obligation To Invent Truer Than Things Can Be True. You Have To Take What Is Not Palpable And Make It Completely Palpable And Also Have It Seem Normal And So That It Can Become A Part Of Experience Of The Person Who Reads It.

There Are Events Which Are So Great That If A Writer Has Participated In Them His Obligation Is To Write Truly Rather Than Assume The Presumption Of Altering Them With Invention.

When You Have A Child, The World Has A Hostage.

Going To Another Country Doesn’t Make Any Difference. I’ve Tried All That. You Can’t Get Away From Yourself By Moving From One Place To Another. There’s Nothing To That.

Never Confuse Movement With Action.

Good Writing Is Good Conversation, Only More So.

Good Conversation

All Things Truly Wicked Start From Innocence.

The World Was Not Wheeling Anymore. It Was Just Very Clear And Bright And Inclined To Blur At The Edges.

We In America Should See That No Man Is Ever Given, No Matter How Gradually Or How Noble And Excellent The Man, The Power To Put This Country Into A War Which Is Now Being Prepared And Brought Closer Each Day With All The Pre-meditation Of A Long Planned Murder. For When You Give Power To An Executive You Do Not Know Who Will Be Filling That Position When The Time Of Crisis Comes.

Our Nada Who Art In Nada, Nada Be Thy Name Thy Kingdom Nada Thy Will Be Nada In Nada As It Is In Nada. Give Us This Nada Our Daily Nada And Nada Us Our Nada As We Nada Our Nadas And Nada Us Not Into Nada But Deliver Us From Nada; Pues Nada. Hail Nothing Full Of Nothing, Nothing Is With Thee.

The Best Way To Become A Writer Is To Go Off And Write.

I Know The Night Is Not The Same As The Day: That All Things Are Different, That The Things Of The Night Cannot Be Explained In The Day, Because They Do Not Then Exist, And The Night Can Be A Dreadful Time For Lonely People Once Their Loneliness Has Started.

Anglers Have A Way Of Romanticizing Their Battles With Fish And Of Forgetting That The Fish Has A Hook In His Mouth, His Gullet, Or His Belly And That His Gameness Is Really An Extreme Of Panic In Which He Runs, Leaps, And Pulls To Get Away Until He Dies. It Would Seem To Be Enough Advantage To The Angler That The Fish Has The Hook In His Mouth Rather Than The Angler.

I Did Not Understand Them But They Did Not Have Any Mystery, And When I Understood Them They Meant Nothing To Me. I Was Sorry About This But There Was Nothing I Could Do About It.

My Big Fish Must Be Somewhere.

I'm Not Going To Get Into The Ring With Tolstoy.

Do You Know How An Ugly Woman Feels? Do You Know What It Is To Be Ugly All Your Life And Inside To Feel That You Are Beautiful? It Is Very Rare.

But Man Is Not Made For Defeat. A Man Can Be Destroyed But Not Defeated.

Nobody That Ever Left Their Own Country Ever Wrote Anything Worth Printing. Not Even In The Newspapers.

But Don't Try To Find An Untroublesome Woman. She Will Dull Out On You. What Makes A Woman Good In Bed Makes It Impossible For Her To Live Alone.

I Am Thee And Thou Art Me And All Of One Is The Other.

The Best Way To Find Out If You Can Trust Somebody Is To Trust Them.

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

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

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.

Find What Gave You Emotion; What The Action Was That Gave You Excitement. Then Write It Down Making It Clear So That The Reader Can See It Too. Prose Is Architecture, Not Interior Decoration, And The Baroque Is Over.

Only That Which Makes You Feel Bad After Doing Is Immoral.

I Decided That I Would Write One Story About Each Thing That I Knew About.

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

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

Where Do The Noses Go? I Always Wondered Where The Noses Would Go.

Everybody Has Something Wrong With Them.

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

There Is Nothing Noble In Being Superior To Your Fellow Men. True Nobility Lies In Being Superior To Your Former Self.

You Should Only Read What Is Truly Good Or What Is Frankly Bad.

It's A Town You Come To For A Short Time.

A Person With Increasing Knowledge And Sensory Education May Derive Infinite Enjoyment From Wine.

You Know You’re Writing Well When You're Throwing Good Stuff Into The Wastebasket.

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.

Decadence Is A Difficult Word To Use Since It Has Become Little More Than A Term Of Abuse Applied By Critics To Anything They Do Not Yet Understand Or Which Seems To Differ From Their Moral Concepts.

Some People Show Evil As A Great Racehorse Shows Breeding. They Have The Dignity Of A Hard Chancre.

In Those Days, There Was No Money To Buy Books.

For A True Writer Each Book Should Be A New Beginning Where He Tries Again For Something That Is Beyond Attainment. He Should Always Try For Something That Has Never Been Done Or That Others Have Tried And Failed. Then Sometimes, With Great Luck, He Will Succeed.

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

Remembers Everything

The Brave Dies Perhaps Two Thousand Deaths If He's Intelligent. He Simply Doesn't Mention Them.

The World Breaks Everyone, And Afterward, Some Are Strong At The Broken Places.

No Subject Is Terrible If The Story Is True, If The Prose Is Clean And Honest, And If It Affirms Courage And Grace Under Pressure.

The Echoes Of Beauty You've Seen Transpire, Resound Through Dying Coals Of A Campfire.

Most People Are Heartless About Turtles Because A Turtle's Heart Will Beat For Hours After He Has Been Cut Up And Butchered. But The Old Man Thought, I Have Such A Heart Too And My Feet And Hands Are Like Theirs.

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

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

I Felt The Death Loneliness That Comes At The End Of Every Day That Is Wasted In Your Life.

But After I Got Them To Leave And Shut The Door And Turned Off The Light It Wasn't Any Good. It Was Like Saying Good-by To A Statue. After A While I Went Out And Left The Hospital And Walked Back To The Hotel In The Rain.

There Was No Really Good True War Book During The Entire Four Years Of The War. The Only True Writing That Came Through During The War Was In Poetry. One Reason For This Is That Poets Are Not Arrested As Quickly As Prose Writers.

He Did Not Care For The Lying At First. He Hated It. Then Later He Had Come To Like It. It Was Part Of Being An Insider But It Was A Very Corrupting Business.

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.

In Africa A Thing Is True At First Light And A Lie By Noon And You Have No More Respect For It Than For The Lovely, Perfect Wood-fringed Lake You See Across The Sun-baked Salt Plain. You Have Walked Across That Plain In The Morning And You Know That No Such Lake Is There. But Now It Is There Absolutely True, Beautiful And Believable.

Never Fall In Love?" "always," Said The Count. "i Am Always In Love.

Falling In Love

Never Fall In Love

Night Life Is When Everybody Says What The Hell And You Do Not Remember Who Paid The Bill.

I Believe That Basically You Write For Two People; Yourself To Try To Make It Absolutely Perfect; Or If Not That Then Wonderful. Then You Write For Who You Love Whether She Can Read Or Write Or Not And Whether She Is Alive Or Dead.

Why Should Anybody Be Interested In Some Old Man Who Was A Failure?

[robert] Capa: He Was A Good Friend And A Great And Very Brave Photographer. It Is Bad Luck For Everybody That The Percentages Caught Up With Him. It Is Especially Bad For Capa. (on Capa's Death In Vietnam, May, 27, 1954)

The Whiskey Warmed His Tongue And The Back Of His Throat, But It Did Not Change His Ideas Any, And Suddenly, Looking At Himself In The Mirror Behind The Bar, He Knew That Drinking Was Never Going To Do Any Good To Him Now. Whatever He Had Now He Had, And It Was From Now On, And If He Drank Himself Unconscious When He Woke Up It Would Be There.

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.

Find The Best Writers, Pay Them To Write, And Avoid Typos At All Costs.

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

Mice: What Is The Best Early Training For A Writer? Y.c.: An Unhappy Childhood.

Unhappy Childhood

I Never Had To Choose A Subject - My Subject Rather Chose Me.

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.

For A Long Time Now I Have Tried Simply To Write The Best I Can. Sometimes I Have Good Luck And Write Better Than I Can.

I Love Sleep. My Life Has The Tendency To Fall Apart When I'm Awake, You Know?

Do Not Think About Sin, He Thought. There Are Enough Problems Now Without Sin. Also I Have No Understanding Of It.

What Is Moral Is What You Feel Good After.

Ethics And Morals

As You Get Older It Is Harder To Have Heroes, But It Is Sort Of Necessary.

My Aim Is To Put Down On Paper What I See And What I Feel In The Best And Simplest Way.

Inspirational Life

There Are Worse Places To Be Than On Your Own.

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'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.

Good Dialogue Is Not Real Speech-it's The Illusion Of Real Speech.

French Is The Language Of Diplomacy. Spanish Is The Language Of Bureaucracy.

You Could Omit Anything If You Knew That The Omitted Part Would Strengthen The Short Story And Make People Feel Something More Than They Understood

The Ocean Is Worth Writing About Just As Man Is.

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