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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.

-Ernest Hemingway

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If A Writer Of

Ernest Hemingway

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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.

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As A Writer, You Should Not Judge, You Should Understand.

There Is No Rule On How To Write. Sometimes It Comes Easily And Perfectly; Sometimes It's Like Drilling Rock And Then Blasting It Out With Charges.

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

Retirement Is The Ugliest Word In The Language.

Never Confuse Motions With Action.

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

My Working Habits Are Simple: Long Periods Of Thinking, Short Periods Of Writing.

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.

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

They Arrested Us After Breakfast.

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

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

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.

The Bulls Are My Best Friends." I Translated To Brett. "you Kill Your Friends?" She Asked. "always," He Said In English, And Laughed. "so They Don't Kill Me.

I Had Gone To No Such Place But To The Smoke Of Cafes And Nights When The Room Whirled And You Needed To Look At The Wall To Make It Stop, Nights In Bed, Drunk, When You Knew That That Was All There Was, And The Strange Excitement Of Waking And Not Knowing Who It Was With You, And The World All Unreal In The Dark And So Exciting That You Must Resume Again Unknowing And Not Caring In The Night, Sure That This Was All And All And All And Not Caring.

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

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.

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.

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.

Wine ... Offers A Greater Range For Enjoyment And Appreciation Than Possibly Any Other Purely Sensory Thing Which May Be Purchased.

You've Such A Lovely Temperature.

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

My Only Regret In Life Is That I Did Not Drink More Wine.

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.

You Are So Brave And Quiet I Forget You Are Suffering.

He Could Beat Anything, He Thought, Because No Thing Could Hurt Him If He Did Not Care.

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.

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.

Each Day Of Not Writing, Of Comfort, Of Being That Which He Despised, Dulled His Ability And Softened His Will To Work So That, Finally, He Did No Work At All.

All Our Words From Loose Using Have Lost Their Edge.

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

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.

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.

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

It Could Be Worse,' Passini Said Respectfully. "there Is Nothing Worse Than War." Defeat Is Worse." I Do Not Believe It," Passini Said Still Respectfully. "what Is Defeat? You Go Home.

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

The Rain Will Stop, The Night Will End, The Hurt Will Fade. Hope Is Never So Lost That It Can't Be Found.

Never Delay Kissing A Pretty Girl Or Opening A Bottle Of Whiskey

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

There Isnt Always An Explanation For Everything.

If A Writer Stops Observing He Is Finished. But He Does Not Have To Observe Consciously Nor Think How It Will Be Useful. Perhaps That Would Be True At The Beginning. But Later Everything He Sees Goes Into The Great Reserve Of Things He Knows Or Has Seen.

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

The Educated Man Is The Man Who Can Do Something. The Quality Of His Work Marks The Degree Of His Education.

For What Are We Born If Not To Aid One Another?

What A Writer Has To Do Is Write What Hasn't Been Written Before Or Beat Dead Men At What They Have Done.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Unbought Stuffed Dogs.

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

It Wasn't By Accident That The Gettysburg Address Was So Short.

Never Write About A Place Until You're Away From It, Because It Gives You Perspective. Immediately After You've Seen Something You Can Give A Photographic Description Of It And Make It Accurate. That's Good Practice, But It Isn't Creative Writing.

Something, Or Something Awful Or Something Wonderful Was Certain To Happen On Every Day In This Part Of Africa.

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.

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

Fortunately I Have Never Learned To Take The Good Advice I Give Myself Nor The Counsel Of My Fears.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Was As Afraid As The Next Man In My Time And Maybe More So. But With The Years, Fear Had Come To Be Regarded As A Form Of Stupidity To Be Classed With Overdrafts, Acquiring A Venereal Disease Or Eating Candies. Fear Is A Child's Vice And While I Loved To Feel It Approach, As One Does With Any Vice, It Was Not For Grown Men And The Only Thing To Be Afraid Of Was The Presence Of True And Imminent Danger In A Form That You Should Be Aware Of And Not Be A Fool If You Were Responsible For Others.

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.

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

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

Having Books Published Is Very Destructive To Writing.

Every Day Above Earth Is A Good Day.

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.

The Best Writing Is Certainly When You Are In Love

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.

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.

I Would Walk Along The Quais When I Had Finished Work Or When I Was Trying To Think Something Out. It Was Easier To Think If I Was Walking And Doing Something Or Seeing People Doing Something That They Understood.

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

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.

I Always Try To Write On The Principle Of The Iceberg. There Is Seven-eighths Of It Underwater For Every Part That Shows.

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.

I Had An Inheritance From My Father, It Was The Moon And The Sun. And Though I Roam All Over The World, The Spending Of It’s Never Done.

Everybody Has Something Wrong With Them.

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

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

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.

The Sinews Of War Are Five - Men, Money, Materials, Maintenance (food) And Morale.

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

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

Where A Man Feels At Home, Outside Of Where He’s Born, Is Where He’s Meant To Go.

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

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

You'll Lose It, If You Talk About It

Write Hard And Clear About What Hurts.

The Game Of Golf Would Lose A Great Deal If Croquet Mallets And Billiard Cues Were Allowed On The Putting Green.

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

To Invent Out Of Knowledge Means To Produce Inventions That Are True. Every Man Should Have A Built-in Automatic Crap Detector Operating Inside Him. It Also Should Have A Manual Drill And A Crank Handle In Case The Machine Breaks Down. If You're Going To Write, You Have To Find Out What's Bad For You. Part Of That You Learn Fast, And Then You Learn What's Good For You.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

The Only Kind Of Writing Is Rewriting.

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.

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

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

Before You Quit, You Have To Try

I Was Trying To Write Then And I Found The Greatest Difficulty, Aside From Knowing What You Really Felt, Rather That What You Were Supposed To Feel, And Had Been Taught To Feel, Was To Put Down What Really Happened In Action; What The Actual Things Which Produced The Emotion That You Experienced.

You Never Kill Any One That You Want To Kill In A War, He Said To Himself.

You Can Write Anytime People Will Leave You Alone And Not Interrupt You.

Not The Why But The What.

Work Could Cure Almost Anything

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

Happy Valentines Day

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.

Why Must All Of The Operations In Life Be Performed Without An Anesthetic?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

There Is No Left And Right In Writing. There Is Only Good And Bad Writing.

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.

The Only Decent Bone In Her Body Was Mine.

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.

And Another Thing. Don’t Ever Kid Yourself About Loving Some One. It Is Just That Most People Are Not Lucky Enough Ever To Have It. You Never Had It Before And Now You Have It. What You Have With Maria, Whether It Lasts Just Through Today And A Part Of Tomorrow, Or Whether It Lasts For A Long Life Is The Most Important Thing That Can Happen To A Human Being. 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.

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

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.

My Writing Is Nothing, My Boxing Is Everything.

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

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.

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.

All I Know Is That Young Boys Sleep Late And Hard.

As To Hemingway, I Read Him For The First Time In The Early 'forties, Something About Bells, Balls And Bulls, And Loathed It.

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

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

Remembers Everything

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.

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.

Only One Marriage I Regret. I Remember After I Got That Marriage License I Went Across From The License Bureau To A Bar For A Drink. The Bartender Said, "what Will You Have, Sir?" And I Said, "a Glass Of Hemlock."

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

Now Is No Time To Think Of What You Do Not Have. Think Of What You Can Do With That There Is

Don't You Drink? I Notice You Speak Slightingly Of The Bottle. I Have Drunk Since I Was Fifteen And Few Things Have Given Me More Pleasure.

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.

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

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.

Go All The Way With It. Do Not Back Off. For Once, Go All The Goddamn Way With What Matters.

You Ought To Dream. All Our Biggest Businessmen Have Been Dreamers.

Modern Life ... Is Often A Mechanical Oppression And Liquor Is The Only Mechanical Relief.

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

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

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.

Critics Are Men Who Watch A Battle From A High Place Then Come Down And Shoot The Survivors.

Cowards Die A Thousand Deaths, But The Brave Only Die Once.

You Don't Have To Destroy Me. Do You? I'm Only A Woman Who Loves You And Wants To Do What You Want To Do. I've Been Destroyed Two Or Three Times Already. You Wouldn't Want To Destroy Me Again, Would You?

Bullfighting Is The Only Art In Which The Artist Is In Danger Of Death And In Which The Degree Of Brilliance In The Performance Is Left To The Fighter's Honor.

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

The Best Ammunition Against Lies Is The Truth, There Is No Ammunition Against Gossip. It Is Like A Fog And The Clear Wind Blows It Away And The Sun Burns It Off.

Experiencing Differences Is Crucial To The Human Condition. Especially When That Difference Is Over The Head, Blower Powder.

Human Condition

It Is Silly Not To Hope, Besides I Believe It Is A Sin." The Old Man And The Sea

Let Him Think Is I Am More Man Than I Am And I Will Be So.

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.

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

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.

No Weapon Has Ever Settled A Moral Problem. It Can Impose A Solution But It Cannot Guarantee It To Be A Just One. You Can Wipe Out Your Opponents. But If You Do It Unjustly You Become Eligible For Being Wiped Out Yourself.

A Man Does Not Exist Until He Is Drunk.

No One Should Be Alone In Their Old Age, He Thought.

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

When I Had Finished The Book I Knew That No Matter What Scott Did, Nor How He Behaved, I Must Know It Was Like A Sickness And Be Of Any Help I Could To Him And Try To Be A Good Friend. He Had Many Good, Good Friends, More Than Anyone I Knew. But I Enlisted As One More, Whether I Could Be Of Any Use To Him Or Not. If He Could Write A Book As Fine As The Great Gatsby I Was Sure That He Could Write An Even Better One. I Did Not Know Zelda Yet, And So I Did Not Know The Terrible Odds That Were Against Him. But We Were To Find Them Out Soon Enough.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

No One Ever Stopped When They Were Winning.

[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)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Great Thing Is To Last And Get Your Work Done And See And Hear And Learn And Understand; And Write When There Is Something That You Know; And Not Before, And Not Too Damned Much After.

I Am Always In Love.

My Father Was A Deeply Sentimental Man. And Like All Sentimental Men, He Was Also Very Cruel.

Some People, When They Hear An Echo, Think They Originated The Sound.

First, There Must Be Talent. . .then There Must Be Discipline. . .then There Must Be. . .and Absolute Conscience. . .to Prevent Faking.

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

It Was Strange How Easy Being Tired Enough Made It.

A Girl Came In The Cafe And Sat By Herself At A Table Near The Window. She Was Very Pretty With A Face Fresh As A Newly Minted Coin If They Minted Coins In Smooth Flesh With Rain-freshened Skin, And Her Hair Black As A Crow's Wing And Cut Sharply And Diagonally Across Her Cheek.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Sea Is The Same As It Has Been Since Before Men Ever Went On It In Boats.

Live It Up So You Can Write It Down.

To Stay In Places And To Leave, To Trust, To Distrust, To No Longer Believe And Believe Again, . . . To Watch The Snow Come, To Watch It Go, To Hear Rain On A Tent, To Know Where I Can Find What I Want.

Good Writing Is Good Conversation, Only More So.

Good Conversation

Because Fascism Is A Lie, It Is Condemned To Literary Sterility. And When It Is Past, It Will Have No History, Except The Bloody History Of Murder.

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