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I Do Not Want You Ever To Initiate Any Action For Any Refunds Of Taxes Without First Consulting Me And Presenting The Matter Fully To Me So That I May Judge Whether It Is An Honorable And Ethical Action To Take, Not Simply Legally, But According To My Own Personal Standards.

-Ernest Hemingway

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I Do Not Want

Ernest Hemingway

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I Do Not Want You Ever To Initiate Any Action For Any Refunds Of Taxes Without First Consulting Me And Presenting The Matter Fully To Me So That I May Judge Whether It Is An Honorable And Ethical Action To Take, Not Simply Legally, But According To My Own Personal Standards.

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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.

To Hell With Them. Nothing Hurts If You Don't Let It.

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

I Used To Play Cello. My Mother Kept Me Out Of School A Whole Year To Study Music And Counterpoint. She Thought I Had Ability, But I Was Absolutely Without Talent.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

However You Make Your Living Is Where Your Talent Lies.

We Would Be Together And Have Our Books And At Night Be Warm In Bed Together With The Windows Open And The Stars Bright.

A Beautiful Vacuum Filled With Wealthy Monogamists, All Powerful And Members Of The Best Families All Drinking Themselves To Death.

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

A Cat Has Absolute Honesty.

What Is Moral Is What You Feel Good After.

Ethics And Morals

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.

A Cat Has Absolute Emotional Honesty: Human Beings, For One Reason Or Another, May Hide Their Feelings, But A Cat Does Not.

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

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.

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.

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

Farewell To Arms

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

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.

All Our Words From Loose Using Have Lost Their Edge.

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

There Are Only Three Sports: Bullfighting, Motor Racing, And Mountaineering; All The Rest Are Merely Games.

Don't Do What You Sincerely Don't Want To Do. Never Confuse Movement With Action.

There Is No Rule On How To Write.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

How Simple The Writing Of Literature Would Be If It Were Only Necessary To Write In Another Way What Has Been Well Written. It Is Because We Have Had Such Great Writers In The Past That A Writer Is Driven Far Out Past Where He Can Go, Out To Where No One Can Help Him.

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

A Serious Writer Is Not To Be Confounded With A Solemn Writer. A Serious Writer May Be A Hawk Or A Buzzard Or Even A Popinjay, But A Solemn Writer Is Always A Bloody Owl.

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.

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

The Only Decent Bone In Her Body Was Mine.

There Is No Such Thing As Great Writing - There Is Only Great Re-writing!

Not The Why But The What.

I Am Always In Love.

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.

I Hate A Cramp, He Thought. It Is A Treachery Of One's Own Body.

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.

The Most Beautiful Fighting Machine I Have Ever Seen

We Need More True Mystery In Our Lives Hem- He Said. The Completely Unambitious Writer And The Really Good Unpublished Poem Are The Things We Lack Most. There Is Of Course The Problem Of Sustenance

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

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

All Stories, If Continued Far Enough, End In Death, And He Is No True-story Teller Who Would Keep That From You. Especially Do All Stories Of Monogamy End In Death, And Your Man Who Is Monogamous While He Often Lives Most Happily, Dies In The Most Lonely Fashion.

Nobody Ever Lives Their Life All The Way Up Except Bullfighters.

Good Writing Is Good Conversation, Only More So.

Good Conversation

There Are Some Things Which Cannot Be Learned Quickly, And Time, Which Is All We Have, Must Be Paid Heavily For Their Acquiring. They Are The Very Simplest Things And Because It Takes A Man's Life To Know Them The Little That Each Man Gets From Life Is Very Costly And The Only Heritage He Has To Leave.

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

I've Seen A Lot Of Patriots And They All Died Just Like Anybody Else If It Hurt Bad Enough And Once They Were Dead Their Patriotism Was Only Good For Legends; It Was Bad For Their Prose And Made Them Write Bad Poetry. If You Are Going To Be A Great Patriot I.e. Loyal To Any Existing Order Of Government (not One Who Wishes To Destroy The Existing For Something Better) You Want To Be Killed Early If Your Life And Works Won't Stink.

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.

Work Every Day. No Matter What Has Happened The Day Or Night Before, Get Up And Bite On The Nail.

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.

People Fall In Love, But Have To Climb Out.

Falling In Love

A Big Lie Is More Plausible Than Truth.

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

For A War To Be Just Three Conditions Are Necessary - Public Authority, Just Cause, Right Motive.

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.

And You Treat Me Wonderfully And Keep All Your Promises.

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Wish I Had Died Before I Ever Loved Anyone But Her.

The Fact That I Am Interrupting Serious Work To Answer These Questions Proves That I Am So Stupid That I Should Be Penalized Severely. I Will Be. Don't Worry.

You Ought To Be Ironical The Minute You Get Out Of Bed. You Ought To Wake Up With Your Mouth Full Of Pity.

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.

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.

We're Stronger In The Places That We've Been Broken.

Hombre, There Are Bodegas Open All Night Long.

And This Was The Price You Paid For Sleeping Together.

Sleeping Together

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

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

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

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

He Was Just A Coward And That Was The Worst Luck Any Many Could Have.

Life Breaks All Of Us But Some Of Us Get Stronger In The Broken Places.

Tell Me Some True Things About Fighting.''tell Me You Love Me.''i Love You,' The Girl Said. 'you Can Publish It In The Gazzettino If You Like. I Love Your Hard, Flat Body And Your Strange Eyes That Frighten Me When They Become Wicked. I Love Your Hand And All Your Other Wounded Places.

No Writer Who Knows The Great Writers Who Did Not Receive The Prize Can Accept It Other Than With Humility. There Is No Need To List These Writers. Everyone Here May Make His Own List According To His Knowledge And His Conscience.

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.

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.

Try To Learn To Breathe Deeply, Really To Taste Food When You Eat, And When You Sleep, Really To Sleep. Try As Much As Possible To Be Wholly Alive With All Your Might, And When You Laugh, Laugh Like Hell. And When You Get Angry, Get Good And Angry. Try To Be Alive. You Will Be Dead Soon Enough.

Writing Is The Clumsy Attempt To Find Symbols For Wordlessness.

If A Writer Stops Observing, He Is Finished.

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

The Further You Go In Writing The More Alone You Are. Most Of Your Best And Oldest Friends Die. Others Move Away. You Do Not See Them Except Rarely, But You Write And Have Much The Same Contact With Them As Though You Were Together At The Café In The Old Days. You Exchange Comic, Sometimes Cheerfully Obscene And Irresponsible Letters, And It Is Almost As Good As Talking. But You Are More Alone Because That Is How You Must Work And The Time To Work Is Shorter All The Time And If You Waste It You Feel You Have Committed A Sin For Which There Is No Forgiveness.

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.

That Every Day Should Be A Fiesta Seemed To Me A Wonderful Discovery.

Men Cannot Act Before The Camera In The Presence Of Death.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Creation's Probably Overrated. After All, God Made The World In Only Six Days And Rested On The Seventh.

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

But You Always Fall For Somebody Else And Then It's All Right. Fall For Them But Don't Let Them Ruin You.

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.

Have Faith In The Yankees My Son. Think Of The Great Dimaggio.

Wars Are Caused By Undefended Wealth.

What Did I Know Best That I Had Not Written About And Lost? What Did I Know About Truly And Care For The Most?

No, That Is The Great Fallacy: The Wisdom Of Old Men. They Do Not Grow Wise. They Grow Careful.

My Big Fish Must Be Somewhere.

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

Any Man Who Eats Dessert Is Not Drinking Enough.

Write Drunk; Edit Sober.

Worry Destroys The Ability To Write. Ill Health Is Bad In The Ratio That It Produces Worry Which Attacks Your Subconscious And Destroys Your Reserves.

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.

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.

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

All Good Books Have One Thing In Common - They Are Truer Than If They Had Really Happened.

Farewell To Arms

Now Catherine Would Die. That Was What You Did. You Died. You Did Not Know What It Was About. You Never Had Time To Learn. They Threw You In And Told You The Rules And The First Time They Caught You Off Base They Killed You. Or They Killed You Gratuitously Like Aymo. Or Gave You The Syphilis Like Rinaldi. But They Killed You In The End. You Could Count On That. Stay Around And They Would Kill You.

Farewell To Arms

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.

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.

If A Writer Of Prose Knows Enough About What He Is Writing About He May Omit Things That He Knows And The Reader, If The Writer Is Writing Truly Enough, Will Have A Feeling Of Those Things As Strongly As Though The Writer Had Stated Them. The Dignity Of Movement Of An Iceberg Is Due To Only One-eighth Of It Being Above Water. A Writer Who Omits Things Because He Does Not Know Them Only Makes Hollow Places In His Writing.

When I Saw My Wife Again Standing By The Tracks As The Train Came In By The Piled Logs At The Station, I Wished I Had Died Before I Had Ever Loved Anyone But Her.

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

Never Mistake Motion For Action.

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

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.

Everybody Has Strange Things That Mean Things To Them. You Couldn't Help It.

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.

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.

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

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.

Everybody Is Friends When Things Are Bad Enough.

Today Is Only One Day In All The Days That Will Ever Be. But What Will Happen In All The Other Days That Ever Come Can Depend On What You Do Today. It's Been That Way All This Year. It's Been That Way So Many Times. All Of War Is That Way.

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.

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.

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.

The Telephone And Visitors Are The Work Destroyers.

It Is A Miserable Thing To Have People Writing About Your Private Life While You Are Alive. I Have Tried To Stop It All That I Could But There Have Been Many Abuses By People I Trusted. You Cannot Stop Trusting People In Life But I Have Learned To Be A Little Bit Careful. The Way To Make People Trust-worthy Is To Trust Them.

If You Have To Go Away,' She Said,'is It Absolutely Necessary To Kill Off Everything You Leave Behind? I Mean Do You Have To Take Away Everything?

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

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

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.

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.

I Am Like A Blind Pig When I Work.

Once We Have A War There Is Only One Thing To Do. It Must Be Won. For Defeat Brings Worse Things Than Any That Can Ever Happen In War.

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

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.

Always Quit For The Day When You Know What You Want To Do Next.

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

Oh, Darling, I've Been So Miserable.

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.

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

A Man's Got To Take A Lot Of Punishment To Write A Really Funny Book.

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

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

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.

Always Do Sober What You Said You'd Do Drunk. That Will Teach You To Keep Your Mouth Shut.

All Thinking Men Are Atheists.

My Writing Is Nothing, My Boxing Is Everything.

A Severed Femoral Artery Empties Itself Faster Than You Can Believe.

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.

Worry Destroys The Ability To Write. Ill Health Is Bad In The Ratio That It Produces Worry Which Attacks Your Subconscious And Destroys Your Nerves.

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.

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know. I Wish That I Were Going To Live A Long Time Instead Of Going To Die Today Because I Have Learned Much About Life In These Four Days; More, I Think Than In All Other Time. I'd Like To Be An Old Man To Really Know. I Wonder If You Keep On Learning Or If There Is Only A Certain Amount Each Man Can Understand. I Thought I Knew So Many Things That I Know Nothing Of. I Wish There Was More Time.

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

The Writer's Job Is Not To Judge, But To Seek To Understand.

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.

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.

To Make War All You Need Is Intelligence. But To Win You Need Talent And Material.

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

The Smallest Coffins Are The Heaviest.

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know.

I Started Out Very Quiet And I Beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I Trained Hard And I Beat Mr. De Maupassant. I've Fought Two Draws With Mr. Stendhal, And I Think I Had An Edge In The Last One. But Nobody's Going To Get Me In Any Ring With Mr. Tolstoy Unless I'm Crazy Or I Keep Getting Better.

A Bottle Of Wine Was Good Company.

In War, One Cannot Say What One Feels.

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.

Be Fully In The Moment,open Yourself To The Powerful Energies Dancing Around You.

Details Make Stories Human, And The More Human A Story Can Be, The Better.

When You Work Hard All Day With Your Head And Know You Must Work Again The Next Day What Else Can Change Your Ideas And Make Them Run On A Different Plane Like Whisky?

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.

It Is Impossible To Believe The Emotional And Spiritual Intensity And Pure, Classic Beauty That Can Be Produced By A Man, An Animal, And A Piece Of Scarlet Serge Draped Over A Stick.

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

Some Writers Are Only Born To Help Another Writer Write One Sentence.

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.

War Is Not Won By Victory.

There Is Seven-eights Of It Under Water For Every Part That Shows. Anything You Know You Can Eliminate And It Only Strengthens Your Iceberg. It Is The Part That Doesn't Show. If A Writer Omits Something Because He Does Not Know It Then There Is A Hole In The Story.

Never Sit A Table When You Can Stand At The Bar.

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

I Felt Very Lonely When They Were All There.

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.

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

Farewell To Arms

God Knows, People Who Are Paid To Have Attitudes Toward Things, Professional Critics, Make Me Sick; Camp-following Eunuchs Of Literature.

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Jean-Francois Cope

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