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Until The Dead Are Buried They Change Somewhat In Appearance Each Day. The Color Change In Caucasian Races Is From White To Yellow, To Yellow-green, To Black. If Left Long Enough In The Heat The Flesh Comes To Resemble Coal-tar, Especially Where It Has Been Broken Or Torn, And It Has Quite A Visible Tarlike Iridescence. The Dead Grow Larger Each Day Until Sometimes They Become Quite Too Big For Their Uniforms, Filling These Until They Seem Blown Tight Enough To Burst. The Individual Members May Increase In Girth To An Unbelievable Extent And Faces Fill As Taut And Globular As Balloons.

-Ernest Hemingway

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Until The Dead Are

Ernest Hemingway

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Until The Dead Are Buried They Change Somewhat In Appearance Each Day. The Color Change In Caucasian Races Is From White To Yellow, To Yellow-green, To Black. If Left Long Enough In The Heat The Flesh Comes To Resemble Coal-tar, Especially Where It Has Been Broken Or Torn, And It Has Quite A Visible Tarlike Iridescence. The Dead Grow Larger Each Day Until Sometimes They Become Quite Too Big For Their Uniforms, Filling These Until They Seem Blown Tight Enough To Burst. The Individual Members May Increase In Girth To An Unbelievable Extent And Faces Fill As Taut And Globular As Balloons.

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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.

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.

You're An Expatriate. You've Lost Touch With The Soil. You Get Precious. Fake European Standards Have Ruined You. You Drink Yourself To Death. You Become Obsessed By Sex. You Spend All Your Time Talking, Not Working. You Are An Expatriate, See? You Hang Around Cafts.

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.

No Animal Has More Liberty Than The Cat, But It Buries The Mess It Makes. The Cat Is The Best Anarchist.

I Loved Her And I Loved No One Else And We Had A Lovely Magic Time While We Were Alone. I Worked Well And We Made Great Trips, And I Thought We Were Invulnerable Again, And It Wasn't Until We Were Out Of The Mountains In Late Spring, And Back In Paris, That The Other Thing Started Again.

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.

Courage Is Grace Under Pressure.

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

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

Live Life To The Fullest

My Training Was Never To Drink After Dinner Nor Before I Wrote Nor While I Was Writing.

I Am Like A Blind Pig When I Work.

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

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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

Easy Writing Makes Hard Reading.

The First Panacea For A Mismanaged Nation Is Inflation Of The Currency; The Second Is War. Both Bring A Temporary Prosperity; Both Bring A Permanent Ruin. But Both Are The Refuge Of Political And Economic Opportunists.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Decided To Stop Drinking With Creeps. I Decided To Drink Only With Friends. I've Lost 30 Pounds.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

He Remembered Poor Julian [actually F. Scott Fitzgerald] And His Romantic Awe Of Them And How He Had Started A Story Once That Began, "the Very Rich Are Different From You And Me." And How Someone Had Said To Julian, "yes, They Have More Money."

Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

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

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.

My Life Used To Be Full Of Everything. Now If You Aren't With Me I Haven't A Thing In The World.

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.

Why, Darling, I Don't Live At All When I'm Not With You.

Farewell To Arms

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

We Wait Always For Something That Does Not Come.

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

Once Writing Has Become Your Major Vice And Greatest Pleasure Only Death Can Stop It.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The 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.

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.

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

To Be Successful In Writing, Use Short Sentences.

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

The Shortest Answer Is Doing The Thing.

Happiness Is Often Presented As Being Very Dull But, He Thought, Lying Awake, That Is Because Dull People Are Sometimes Very Happy And Intelligent People Can And Do Go Around Making Themselves And Everyone Else Miserable. He Had Never Found Happiness Dull. It Always Seemed More Exciting Than Any Other Thing And Capable Of As Great Intensity As Sorrow To Those People Who Were Capable Of Having It.

Found Happiness

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

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.

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.

Never Write About A Place Until You're Away From It, Because That Gives You Perspective

Why Did They Make Birds So Delicate And Fine As Those Sea Swallows When The Ocean Can Be So Cruel?

Ronda Is The Place Where To Go, If You Are Planning To Travel To Spain For A Honeymoon Or For Being With A Girlfriend. The Whole City And Its Surroundings Are A Romantic Set. ... Nice Promenades, Good Wine, Excellent Food, Nothing To Do.

But Paris Was A Very Old City And We Were Young And Nothing Was Simple There, Not Even Poverty, Nor Sudden Money, Nor The Moonlight, Nor Right And Wrong Nor The Breathing Of Someone Who Lay Beside You In The Moonlight.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Have Noticed That Doctors Who Fail In The Practice Of Medicine Have A Tendency To Seek One Another's Company And Aid In Consultation.

Practice Of Medicine

Farewell To Arms

Develop A Built-in Bullshit Detector.

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

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

There Is No Friend As Loyal As A Book.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The One Who Is Doing His Work And Getting Satisfaction From It Is Not The One The Poverty Bothers.

Wine Is One Of The Most Civilized Things In The World And One Of The Most Natural Things Of The World That Has Been Brought To The Greatest Perfection, And It Offers A Greater Range For Enjoyment And Appreciation Than, Possibly, Any Other Purely Sensory Thing.

A Writer Without A Sense Of Justice Or Injustice Would Be Better Off Editing The Yearbook For A School For Exceptional Children.

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

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.

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.

You've Such A Lovely Temperature.

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

Remembers Everything

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

Since I Had Started To Break Down All My Writing And Get Rid Of All Facility And Try To Make Instead Of Describe, Writing Had Been Wonderful To Do.

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

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.

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

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

Later He Had Seen The Things That He Could Never Think Of And Later Still He Had Seen Much Worse.

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

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

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

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.

Cowardice, As Distinguished From Panic, Is Almost Always Simply A Lack Of Ability To Suspend The Functioning Of The Imagination. Learning To Suspend Your Imagination And Live Completely In The Very Second Of The Present With No Before And No After Is The Greatest Gift A Soldier Can Acquire.

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

I Kept This To Remind Me Of You Trying To Brush Away The Villa Rossa From Your Teeth In The Morning, Swearing And Eating Aspirin And Cursing Harlots. Every Time I See That Glass I Think Of You Trying To Clean Your Conscience With A Toothbrush.

There Is No Rule On How To Write.

There Is A Great Inertia About All Military Operations Of Any Size. But Once This Inertia Has Been Overcome And Underway They Are Almost As Hard To Arrest As To Initiate.

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.

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).

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.

Having Books Published Is Very Destructive To Writing.

Life Is Pain, So Live It Up While You Can.

Hunger Is Good Discipline.

Good Discipline

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

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.

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

What I Learned Constructive About Women, Not Just Ethics Like Never Blame Them If They Pox You Because Somebody Poxed Them And Lots Of Times They Don't Even Know They Have It — That's In The First Reader For Squares — Is, No Matter How They Get, Always Think Of Them The Way They Were On The Best Day They Ever Had.

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

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

However You Make Your Living Is Where Your Talent Lies.

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

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

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

Just As, With The Radio, There Are Certain Things That You Become Fond Of,and You Welcome Them And Resent The New Things

Most People Never Listen.

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

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

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

How Lazily The Sun Goes Down In Granada, It Hides Beneath The Water, It Conceals In The Alhambra!

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

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

You Are Killing Me, Fish, The Old Man Thought. But You Have A Right To. Never Have I Seen A Greater, Or More Beautiful, Or A Calmer Or More Noble Thing Than You, Brother.

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

Riding Your Bike

I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

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.

All A Man Has Is Pride. Sometimes You Have It So Much It Is A Sin. We Have All Done Things For Pride That We Knew Were Impossible. We Didn't Care. But A Man Must Implement His Pride With Intelligence And Care.

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

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

Mr. Barnes, It Is Because I Have Lived Very Much That Now I Can Enjoy Everything So Well

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.

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.

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

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.

How Do You Tell A Valuable French Book?' 'first There Are The Pictures. Then It Is A Question Of The Quality Of The Pictures. Then It Is The Binding. If A Book Is Good, The Owner Will Have It Bound Properly. All Books In English Are Bound, But Bound Badly. There Is No Way Of Judging Them.

I Do Not Know What I Thought Paris Would Be Like, But It Was Not That Way. It Rained Nearly Every Day.

I'm Not Unfaithful, Darling. I've Plenty Of Faults But I'm Very Faithful. You'll Be Sick Of Me I'll Be So Faithful.

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

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

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

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

Good Writing Is Good Conversation, Only More So.

Good Conversation

You’ll Ache. And You’re Going To Love It. It Will Crush You. And You’re Still Going To Love All Of It.

Every Man's Life Ends The Same Way. It Is Only The Details Of How He Lived And How He Died That Distinguish One Man From Another.

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.

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

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.

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

When People Talk, Listen Completely. Most People Never Listen.

Write The Story, Take Out All The Good Lines, And See If It Still Works.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

For A Poet He Threw A Very Accurate Milk Bottle.

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

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

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

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

No Good Book Has Ever Been Written That Has In It Symbols Arrived At Beforehand And Stuck In. ... I Tried To Make A Real Old Man, A Real Boy, A Real Sea And A Real Fish And Real Sharks. But If I Made Them Good And True Enough They Would Mean Many Things

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

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.

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

Never Mistake Movement For Action

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.

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

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.

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

Funny Sarcastic

As A Nobel Prize Winner I Cannot But Regret That The Award Was Never Given To Mark Twain, Nor To Henry James, Speaking Only Of My Own Countrymen. Greater Writers Than These Also Did Not Receive The Prize. I Would Have Been Happy - Happier - Today If The Prize Had Been Given To That Beautiful Writer Isak Dinesen.

Hesitation Increases In Relation To Risk In Equal Proportion To Age.

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.

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.

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

I Was So Sentimental About You I'd Break Any One's Heart For You. My, I Was A Damned Fool. I Broke My Own Heart, Too. It's Broken And Gone. Everything I Believe In And Everything I Cared About I Left For You Because You Were So Wonderful And You Loved Me So Much That Love Was All That Mattered. Love Was The Greatest Thing, Wasn't It?

America Is The Land Of Wide Lawns And Narrow Minds.

The Only Kind Of Writing Is Rewriting.

The Questioners Had That Beautiful Detachment And Devotion To Stern Justice Of Men Dealing In Death Without Being In Any Danger Of It.

The Best Way Is To Read It All Every Day From The Start, Correcting As You Go Along, Then Go On From Where You Stopped The Day Before. When It Gets So Long That You Can't Do This Every Day Read Back Two Or Three Chapters Each Day; Then Each Week Read It All From The Start. That's How You Make It All Of One Piece.

A Big Lie Is More Plausible Than Truth.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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