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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.

-Ernest Hemingway

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The Further You Go

Ernest Hemingway

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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.

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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.

I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

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

The Telephone And Visitors Are The Work Destroyers.

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

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.

There Is No Rule On How To Write.

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.

Optimism Can Keep A Fool From Accepting Failure.

We Who Have Seen Him Now, Light On His Feet, Smooth Moving As A Leopard, A Young Man With An Old Man's Science, The Most Beautiful Fighting Machine I Have Ever Seen, May Live To See Him Fat, Slow, Old, And Bald Taking A Beating From A Younger Man. But I Would Like To Hazard A Prediction That Whoever Beats Joe Louis In An Honest Fight In The Next Fifteen Years Will Have To Get Up The Floor To Do It.

There Were Many Words That You Could Not Stand To Hear And Finally Only The Names Of Places Had Dignity. Certain Numbers Were The Same Way And Certain Dates And These With The Names Of The Places Were All You Could Say And Have Them Mean Anything. Abstract Words Such As Glory, Honor, Courage, Or Hallow Were Obscene Beside The Concrete Names Of Villages, The Numbers Of Roads, The Names Of Rivers, The Numbers Of Regiments And The Dates.

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.

But Did Thee Feel The Earth Move?

Worry Destroys The Ability To Write.

To Be Successful In Writing, Use Short Sentences.

No One Ever Stopped When They Were Winning.

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

To Be Able To Say: I Loved This Person, We Had A Hell Of A Nice Time Together, It's Over But In A Way It Will Never Be Over And I Do Know That I For Sure Loved This Person, To Be Able To Say That And Mean It, That's Rare. That's Rare And Valuable.

Show The Readers Everything, Tell Them Nothing.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

God Knows I Didn't Mean To Fall In Love With Her

Falling In Love

Every Day Above Earth Is A Good Day.

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

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.

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

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.

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. If It Is All The Same To You I Would Rather Not Expound On That.

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.

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.

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

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

Infantry Division

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.

But In The Meantime All The Life You Have Or Ever Will Have Is Today, Tonight, Tomorrow, Today, Tonight, Tomorrow, Over And Over Again (i Hope).

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.

Write Drunk; Edit Sober.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

His Talent Was As Natural As The Pattern That Was Made By The Dust On A Butterfly's Wings. At One Time He Understood It No More Than The Butterfly Did And He Did Not Know When It Was Brushed Or Marred.

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.

It's Harder To Write In The Third Person But The Advantage Is You Move Around Better.

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.

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.

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

Actually If A Writer Needs A Dictionary He Should Not Write. He Should Have Read The Dictionary At Least Three Times From Beginning To End And Then Have Loaned It To Someone Who Needs It. There Are Only Certain Words Which Are Valid And Similes (bring Me My Dictionary) Are Like Defective Ammunition (the Lowest Thing I Can Think Of At This Time).

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

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

War Is No Longer Made By Simply Analyzed Economic Forces If It Ever Was. War Is Made Or Planned Now By Individual Men, Demagogues And Dictators Who Play On The Patriotism Of Their People To Mislead Them Into A Belief In The Great Fallacy Of War When All Their Vaunted Reforms Have Failed To Satisfy The People They Misrule.

Isn't It Pretty To Think So.

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.

We Thought Of Wine As Something As Healthy And Normal As Food And Also As A Great Giver Of Happiness And Well Being And Delight.

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.

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

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.

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

Now I Am Depressed Myself,' I Said. 'that's Why I Never Think About These Things. I Never Think And Yet When I Begin To Talk I Say The Things I Have Found Out In My Mind Without Thinking.

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.

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

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.

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

Take A Good Rest, Small Bird," He Said. "then Go In And Take Your Chance Like Any Man Or Bird Or Fish.

You Must Be Prepared To Work Always Without Applause.

That Terrible Mood Of Depression Of Whether It's Any Good Or Not Is What Is Known As The Artist's Reward.

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

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

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.

Failure And Well-disguised Cowardice Are More Human And More Beloved.

Writing Is The Clumsy Attempt To Find Symbols For Wordlessness.

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

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.

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.

America Is The Land Of Wide Lawns And Narrow Minds.

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

My Attitude Toward Punctuation Is That It Ought To Be As Conventional As Possible. The Game Of Golf Would Lose A Good Deal If Croquet Mallets And Billiard Cues Were Allowed On The Putting Green. You Ought To Be Able To Show That You Can Do It A Good Deal Better Than Anyone Else With The Regular Tools Before You Have A License To Bring In Your Own Improvements.

Clearly I Miss Him, Having Been Brought Up In Religion. But Now A Man Must Be Responsible To Himself.

You've Such A Lovely Temperature.

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

You'll Lose It, If You Talk About It

Everybody Has Something Wrong With Them.

You Don't Have To Destroy Me. Do You?

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

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

You Expected To Be Sad In The Fall. Part Of You Died Each Year When The Leaves Fell From The Trees And Their Branches Were Bare Against The Wind And The Cold, Wintery Light. But You Knew There Would Always Be The Spring, As You Knew The River Would Flow Again After It Was Frozen. When The Cold Rains Kept On And Killed The Spring, It Was As Though A Young Person Died For No Reason.

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

Never Confuse Movement With Action.

Develop A Built-in Bullshit Detector.

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

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

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

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

No; That Doesn't Interest Me.' 'that's Because You Never Read A Book About It.

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

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

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.

[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)

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

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

Live The Full Life Of The Mind, Exhilarated By New Ideas, Intoxicated By The Romance Of The Unusual.

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.

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

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

There Were Many Words That You Could Not Stand To Hear And Finally Only The Names Of Places Had Dignity. Abstract Words Such As Glory, Honor, Courage, Or Hallow Were Obscene.

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.

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

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

The Hard Part About Writing A Novel Is Finishing It.

Wine Is A Grand Thing," I Said. "it Makes You Forget All The Bad.

Farewell To Arms

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.

Everything You Have Is To Give. Thou Art A Phenomenon Of Philosophy And An Unfortunate Man.

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.

Look At Things And Listen And Feel.

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

This Looking And Not Seeing Things Was A Great Sin, I Thought, And One That Was Easy To Fall Into. It Was Always The Beginning Of Something Bad And I Thought That We Did Not Deserve To Live In The World If We Did Not See It.

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.

Poor Faulkner. Does He Really Think Big Emotions Come From Big Words? He Thinks I Don’t Know The Ten-dollar Words. I Know Them All Right. But There Are Older And Simpler And Better Words, And Those Are The Ones I Use.

Wine Is The Most Civilized Thing In The World.

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.

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

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

Hail Nothing Full Of Nothing, Nothing Is With Thee.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It Was A Pleasant Cafe, Warm And Clean And Friendly, And I Hung Up My Old Water-proof On The Coat Rack To Dry And Put My Worn And Weathered Felt Hat On The Rack Above The Bench And Ordered A Cafe Au Lait. The Waiter Brought It And I Took Out A Notebook From The Pocket Of The Coat And A Pencil And Started To Write.

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

Somebody Just Back Of You While You Are Fishing Is As Bad As Someone Looking Over Your Shoulder While You Write A Letter To Your Girl.

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

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

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

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

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

In Company With People Of Your Own Trade You Ordinarily Speak Of Other Writers' Books. The Better The Writers The Less They Will Speak About What They Have Written Themselves. Joyce Was A Very Great Writer And He Would Only Explain What He Was Doing To Jerks. Other Writers That He Respected Were Supposed To Be Able To Know What He Was Doing By Reading It.

I'm Always Reading Books-as Many As There Are. I Ration Myself On Them So That I'll Always Be In Supply.

The Only Way To Combat The Murder That Is War Is To Show The Dirty Combinations That Make It And The Criminals And Swine That Hope For It And The Idiotic Way They Run It When They Get It So That An Honest Man Will Distrust It As He Would Distrust A Racket And Refuse To Be Enslaved Into It.

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

Farewell To Arms

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

I Wanted To Try This New Drink: That's All We Do, Isn't It - Look At Things And Try New Drinks?

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.

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know.

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

Writing Is Something That You Can Never Do As Well As It Can Be Done. It Is A Perpetual Challenge And It Is More Difficult Than Anything Else That I Have Ever Done.

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.

Never Mistake Movement For Action

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

War Is Not Won By Victory.

Try And Write Straight English; Never Using Slang Except In Dialogue And Then Only When Unavoidable. Because All Slang Goes Sour In A Short Time. I Only Use Swear Words, For Example, That Have Lasted At Least A Thousand Years For Fear Of Getting Stuff That Will Be Simply Timely And Then Go Sour.

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

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.

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

I Like To Listen. I Have Learned A Great Deal From Listening Carefully. Most People Never Listen.

Live It Up So You Can Write It Down.

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

You're Not A Moron. You're Only A Case Of Arrested Development.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Drinking Wine Was Not A Snobbism Nor A Sign Of Sophistication Nor A Cult; It Was As Natural As Eating And To Me As Necessary.

The Fun Of Talk Is To Explore, But Much Of It And All That Is Irresponsible Should Not Be Written. Once Written You Have To Stand By It. You May Have Said It To See Whether You Believed It Or Not.

The Most Painful Thing Is Losing Yourself In The Process Of Loving Someone Too Much, And Forgetting That You Are Special Too.

I Was Young And Not Gloomy And There Were Always Strange And Comic Things That Happened In The Worst Time.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

You Know Lots Of Criticism Is Written By Characters Who Are Very Academic And Think It Is A Sign You Are Worthless If You Make Jokes Or Kid Or Even Clown. I Wouldn't Kid Our Lord If He Was On The Cross. But I Would Attempt A Joke With Him If I Ran Into Him Chasing The Money Changers Out Of The Temple.

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.

Having Books Published Is Very Destructive To Writing. It Is Even Worse Than Making Love Too Much. Because When You Make Love Too Much At Least You Get A Damned Clarte That Is Like No Other Light. A Very Clear And Hollow Light.

The Writer's Job Is To Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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

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.

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

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