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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.

-Ernest Hemingway

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I Believe That Basically

Ernest Hemingway

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

No One Ever Stopped When They Were Winning.

It's All Nonsense. It's Only Nonsense. I'm Not Afraid Of The Rain. I Am Not Afraid Of The Rain. Oh, Oh, God, I Wish I Wasn't.

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

It Was Considered A Virtue Not To Talk Unnecessarily At Sea.

Use Short Sentences. Use Short First Paragraphs. Use Vigorous English. Be Positive, Not Negative.

Oh, Darling, I've Been So Miserable.

And How Much Better To Die In All The Happy Period Of Undisillusioned Youth, To Go Out In A Blaze Of Light, Than To Have Your Body Worn Out And Old And Illusions Shattered.

All Our Words From Loose Using Have Lost Their Edge.

Some Other Places Were Not So Good But Maybe We Were Not So Good When We Were In Them.

Religion Is The Opium Of The Poor.

Practice Any Faith You Wish. Got A Ball Field Up The Island Where You Can Practice. I'll Give The Deity A Fast One High And Inside If He Crowds The Plate.

There Are So Many Good Ones To Paint And If You Paint As Well As You Really Can And Keep Out Of All Other Things And Do That, It Is The True Thing.

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

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

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

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

Ezra Was Right Half The Time, And When He Was Wrong, He Was So Wrong You Were Never In Any Doubt About It.

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

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.

Read Anything I Write For The Pleasure Of Reading It. Whatever Else You Find Will Be The Measure Of What You Brought To The Reading.

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.

Courage Is Grace Under Pressure.

Eschew The Monumental. Shun The Epic. All The Guys Who Can Paint Great Big Pictures Can Paint Great Small Ones.

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

They Wrote In The Old Days That It Is Sweet And Fitting To Die For One's Country. But In Modern War, There Is Nothing Sweet Nor Fitting In Your Dying. You Will Die Like A Dog For No Good Reason.

The Worst Death For Anyone Is To Lose The Center Of His Being, The Thing He Really Is. Retirement Is The Filthiest Word In The Language. Whether By Choice Or By Fate, To Retire From What You Do - And Makes You What You Are - Is To Back Up Into The Grave.

In Order To Be A Great Writer A Person Must Have A Built-in, Shockproof Crap Detector.

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know.

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

All The Critics Who Could Not Make Their Reputations By Discovering You Are Hoping To Make Them By Predicting Hopefully Your Approaching Impotence, Failure And General Drying Up Of Natural Juices. Not A One Will Wish You Luck Or Hope That You Will Keep On Writing Unless You Have Political Affiliations In Which Case These Will Rally Around And Speak Of You And Homer, Balzac, Zola And Link Steffens.

Scott Fitzgerald Was Mortally Afraid Of Lightning.

Scott Fitzgerald

I Don't Think I Ever Owned Twenty Pencils At One Time. Wearing Down Seven Number-two Pencils Is A Good Day's Work.

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.

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.

So This Was How You Died, In Whispers That You Did Not Hear.

Maybe...you'll Fall In Love With Me All Over Again." "hell," I Said, "i Love You Enough Now. What Do You Want To Do? Ruin Me?" "yes. I Want To Ruin You." "good," I Said. "that's What I Want Too.

Let’s Not Talk About How I Am. It’s A Subject I Know Too Much About To Want To Think About Anymore.

I Am Always In Love.

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

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

I Love Thee And Thou Art So Lovely And So Wonderful And So Beautiful And It Does Such Things To Me To Be With Thee That I Feel As Though I Wanted To Die When I Am Loving Thee.

The Old Man Looked At Him With His Sun-burned, Confident Loving Eyes.

All Things Truly Wicked Start From Innocence.

Never Confuse Motions With Action.

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

Survival, With Honor, That Outmoded And All-important Word, Is As Difficult As Ever And As All-important To A Writer. Those Who Do Not Last Are Always More Beloved Since No One Has To See Them In Their Long, Dull, Unrelenting, No-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, Fights That They Make To Do Something As They Believe It Should Be Done Before They Die. Those Who Die Or Quit Early And Easy And With Every Good Reason Are Preferred Because They Are Understandable And Human. Failure And Well-disguised Cowardice Are More Human And More Beloved.

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.

Intelligence Is So Damn Rare And The People Who Have It Often Have Such A Bad Time With It That They Get Bitter Or Propagandistic And Then It's Not Much Use.

Please Tell Me What Can I Do. There Must Be Something I Can Do

Every Damn Thing Is Your Own Fault, If You Are Any Good.

Rush, That Most Exciting Perversion Of Life, The Necessity Of Accomplishing Something In Less Time Than Should Be Truly Allowed For Its Doing.

Accomplishing Something

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

It Is Very Bad For (an Artist) To Talk About How He (creates). It Is Not The (artist's) Province To Explain Or To Run Guided Tours Through The More Difficult Country Of His Work. It's None Of Their Business That You Had To Learn. Let Them Think You Were Born That Way.

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

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.

If People Bring So Much Courage To This World The World Has To Kill Them To Break Them, So Of Course It Kills Them. The World Breaks Every One 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.

It Is One Thing To Be In The Proximity Of Death, To Know More Or Less What She Is, And It Is Quite Another Thing To Seek Her.

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

It Was Like Certain Dinners I Remember From The War. There Was Much Wine, An Ignored Tension, And A Feeling Of Things Coming That You Could Not Prevent Happening. Under The Wine I Lost The Disgusted Feeling And Was Happy. It Seemed They Were All Such Nice People.

His (the Writer's) Standard Of Fidelity To The Truth Should Be So High That His Invention, Out Of His Experience, Should Produce A Truer Account Than Anything Factual Can Be.

Now He Was Proving It Again. Each Time Was A New Time And He Never Thought About The Past When He Was Doing It.

All Thinking Men Are Atheists.

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

My Heart's Broken,' He Thought. 'if I Feel This Way My Heart Must Be Broken.

But Paris Was A Very Old City And We Were Young And Nothing Was Simple There.

Fish," He Said Softly, Aloud, "i'll Stay With You Until I Am Dead.

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

Live It Up So You Can Write It Down.

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.

What Difference Does It Make If You Live In A Picturesque Little Outhouse Surrounded By 300 Feeble Minded Goats And Your Faithful Dog? The Question Is: Can You Write?

They Arrested Us After Breakfast.

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

The Better The Writers The Less They Will Speak About What They Have Written Themselves.

We Have Come Out Of The Time When Obedience, The Acceptance Of Discipline, Intelligent Courage And Resolution Were Most Important, Into That More Difficult Time When It Is A Man's Duty To Understand His World Rather Than Simply Fight For It.

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.

Fish," The Old Man Said. "fish, You Are Going To Have To Die Anyway. Do You Have To Kill Me Too?

But I Think The Great Dimaggio Would Be Proud Of Me Today.

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

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

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

Anyone Can Be A Fisherman In May.

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.

Fish," He Said, "i Love You And Respect You Very Much. But I Will Kill You Dead Before This Day Ends.

Fish In The Sea

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.

If A Writer Knows Enough About What He Is Writing About, He May Omit Things That He Knows. The Dignity Of Movement Of An Iceberg Is Due To Only One Ninth Of It Being Above Water.

And You Treat Me Wonderfully And Keep All Your Promises.

Work Could Cure Almost Anything

I Did Not Care What It Was All About. All I Wanted To Know Was How To Live In It. Maybe If You Found Out How To Live In It You Learned From That What Is Was All About.

There Is No Night Life In Spain. They Stay Up Late But They Get Up Late. That Is Not Night Life. That Is Delaying The Day. Night Life Is When You Get Up With A Hangover In The Morning. Night Life Is When Everybody Says What The Hell And You Do Not Remember Who Paid The Bill. Night Life Goes Round And Round And You Look At The Wall To Make It Stop. Night Life Comes Out Of A Bottle And Goes Into A Jar. If You Think How Much Are The Drinks It Is Not Night Life.

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.

Would You Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Stop Talking?

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

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.

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.

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.

Writing, At Its Best, Is A Lonely Life.

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

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

Hombre, There Are Bodegas Open All Night Long.

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

Time Is The Least Thing We Have.

The Ocean Is Worth Writing About Just As Man Is.

What Is The Definition Of Guts? Grace Under Pressure.

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.

In The Early Morning On The Lake Sitting In The Stern Of The Boat With His Father Rowing, He Felt Quite Sure That He Would Never Die.

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.

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

Write The Best Story That You Can And Write It As Straight As You Can.

We Think. We Are Not Peasants. We Are Mechanics. But Even The Peasants Know Better Than To Believe In A War. Everybody Hates War. There Is A Class That Control A Country That Is Stupid And Down Not Realise Anything And Never Can. That Is Why We Have This War. Also They Make Money Out Of It.

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.

Love Is Infinitely More Endurable Than Hate.

No Horse Named Morbid Ever Won A Race.

When You Stop Doing Things For Fun You Might As Well Be Dead.

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

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.

He Would Lie In The Bed And Finally, With Daylight, He Would Go To Sleep. After All, He Said To Himself, It Is Probably Only Insomnia. Many Must Have It.

Don't You Like To Write Letters? I Do Because It's Such A Swell Way To Keep From Working And Yet Feel You've Done Something.

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

You May Talk. And I May Listen. And Miracles Might Happen.

Anglers Have A Way Of Romanticizing Their Battles With Fish.

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

It Wasn't By Accident That The Gettysburg Address Was So Short. The Laws Of Prose Writing Are As Immutable As Those Of Flight, Of Mathematics, Of Physics.

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

The Only Decent Bone In Her Body Was Mine.

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.

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

I’m Trying In All My Stories To Get The Feeling Of The Actual Life Across—not To Just Depict Life—or Criticize It—but To Actually Make It Alive. So That When You Have Read Something By Me You Actually Experience The Thing. You Can’t Do This Without Putting In The Bad And The Ugly As Well As What Is Beautiful. Because If It Is All Beautiful You Can’t Believe In It. Things Aren’t That Way.

Don't You Ever Get The Feeling That All Your Life Is Going By And You're Not Taking Advantage Of It? Do You Realize You've Lived Nearly Half The Time You Have To Live Already?

Live Life To The Fullest

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. Thus You Remember Them As They Actually Are, While In A Motor Car Only A High Hill Impresses You, And You Have No Such Accurate Remembrance Of The Country You Have Driven Through As You Gain By Riding A Bicycle.

All Cowardice Comes From Not Truly Loving, Or At Least, Not Loving Well.

It Seemed Out Of Place To Think Of Consequences During The Fiesta.

Everyone My Age Had Written A Novel And I Was Still Having Difficulty Writing A Paragraph.

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

I Am So In Love With You That There Isn’t Anything Else.

And Bed, He Thought. Bed Is My Friend. Just Bed, He Thought. Bed Will Be A Great Thing. It Is Easy When You Are Beaten, He Thought. I Never Knew How Easy It Was. And What Beat You, The Thought.

What Is Moral Is What You Feel Good After.

Ethics And Morals

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

You Can't Get Away From Yourself By Moving From One Place To Another.

Lost Generation

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

A Writer Is Like A Gypsy. He Owes No Allegiance To Any Government. If He Is A Good Writer He Will Never Like Any Government He Lives Under. His Hand Should Be Against It And Its Hand Will Always Be Against Him.

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.

Today Is Only One Day In All The Days That Will Ever Be.

I Mistrust All Frank And Simple People, Especially When Their Stories Hold Together

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

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

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

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.

But Life Isn't Hard To Manage When You've Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

I Do Not Think I Had Ever Seen A Nastier-looking Man. Under The Black Hat, When I Had First Seen Them, The Eyes Had Been Those Of An Unsuccessful Rapist.

You Won't Do Our Things With Another Girl, Or Say The Same Things, Will You?

Farewell To Arms

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.

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.

Bigotry Is An Odd Thing. To Be Bigoted You Have To Be Absolutely Sure You Are Right And Nothing Makes That Surety And Righteousness Like Continence. Continence Is The Foe Of Heresy.

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.

[never Give Up Hope. Never Give In To Pessimism. Never Despair.] No Horse Named Morbid Ever Won A Race!

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.

In The Fall The War Was Always There But We Did Not Go To It Any More.

No Tears In The Writer, No Tears In The Reader.

We Are All Apprentices In A Craft Where No One Ever Becomes A Master.

So Far, 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.

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

Farewell To Arms

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

Never Mistake Motive For Action.

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.

Ascensions Into Heaven Are Like Falling Leaves Sad And Happy All At The Same Time Going Away Isn't Really Sad Especially When Your Going Enables A New Kind Of Presence To Be Born.

For We Have Thought The Longer Thoughts And Gone The Shorter Way. And We Have Danced To Devils' Tunes, Shivering Home To Pray; To Serve One Master In The Night, Another In The Day.

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

Being Against Evil Doesn't Make You Good. Tonight I Was Against It And Then I Was Evil Myself. I Could Feel It Coming Just Like A Tide... I Just Want To Destroy Them. But When You Start Taking Pleasure In It You Are Awfully Close To The Thing You're Fighting.

Not The Why But The What.

If My Valentine You Won't Be, I'll Hang Myself On Your Christmas Tree.

Happy Valentines Day

It Is Awfully Easy To Be Hard-boiled About Everything In The Daytime, But At Night It Is Another Thing.

He Rested Sitting On The Un-stepped Mast And Sail And Tried Not To Think But Only To Endure.

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

The Fish Is My Friend Too...i Have Never Seen Or Heard Of Such A Fish. But I Must Kill Him. I Am Glad We Do Not Have To Try To Kill The Stars. Imagine If Each Day A Man Must Try To Kill The Moon, He Thought. The Moon Runs Away. But Imagine If A Man Each Day Should Have To Try To Kill The Sun? We Were Born Lucky; He Thought

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.

Hunger Is Good Discipline.

Good Discipline

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.

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.

Here Is The Piece. If You Can't Say Fornicate Can You Say Copulate Or If Not That Can You Say Co-habit? If Not That Would Have To Say Consummate I Suppose. Use Your Own Good Taste And Judgment.

Taste And Judgment

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.

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.

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

There Is Never Any Ending To Paris And The Memory Of Each Person Who Has Lived In It Differs From That Of Any Other. We Always Returned To It No Matter Who We Were Or How It Was Changed Or With What Difficulties, Or Ease, It Could Be Reached. Paris Was Always Worth It And You Received Return For Whatever You Brought To It. But This Is How Paris Was In The Early Days When We Were Very Poor And Very Happy.

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

If The Others Heard Me Talking Out Loud They Would Think That I Am Crazy. But Since I Am Not, I Do Not Care.

Everyone Behaves Badly--given The Chance.

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.

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.

The Coward Dies A Thousand Deaths, The Brave But One'.... (the Man Who First Said That) Was Probably A Coward.... He Knew A Great Deal About Cowards But Nothing About The Brave. The Brave Dies Perhaps Two Thousand Deaths If He's Intelligent. He Simply Doesn't Mention Them.

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

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.

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

Writing Is A Hard Business...but Nothing Makes You Feel Better.

The Cat Has Complete Emotional Honesty - An Attribute Not Often Found In Humans.

You Write A Book Like That You're Fond Of Over The Years, Then You See That Happen To It, It's Like Pissing In Your Father's Beer.

He Was Violating The Second Rule Of The Two Rules For Getting On Well With People That Speak Spanish; Give The Men Tobacco And Leave The Women Alone

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