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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?

-Ernest Hemingway

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What Difference Does It

Ernest Hemingway

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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?

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More From Ernest Hemingway

To Me Heaven Would Be A Big Bull Ring With Me Holding Two Barrera Seats And A Trout Stream Outside That No One Else Was Allowed To Fish In And Two Lovely Houses In The Town; One Where I Would Have My Wife And Children And Be Monogamous And Love Them Truly And Well And The Other Where I Would Have My Nine Beautiful Mistresses On Nine Different Floors.

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.

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.

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

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

Every Day Above Earth Is A Good Day.

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

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

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.

As You Get Older It Is Harder To Have Heroes, But It Is Sort Of Necessary.

Never Confuse Motions With Action.

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.

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

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.

Never Mistake Motive For Action.

Being Against Evil Doesn't Make You Good.

Good Against Evil

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.

Everyone Has His Own Conscience, And There Should Be No Rules About How A Conscience Should Function.

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.

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.

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

A Writer Can Be Compared To A Well. There Are As Many Kinds Of Wells As There Are Writers. The Important Thing Is To Have Good Water In The Well, And It Is Better To Take A Regular Amount Out Than To Pump The Well Dry And Wait For It To Refill.

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

I Would Like To Take The Great Dimaggio Fishing," The Old Man Said. "they Say His Father Was A Fisherman. Maybe He Was As Poor As We Are And Would Understand.

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

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

You've Such A Lovely Temperature.

I Was A Little Drunk. Not Drunk In Any Positive Sense But Just Enough To Be Careless.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I'm Tired Of Everybody. Please Forgive Me.

This Was A Big Storm And He Might As Well Enjoy It. It Was Ruining Everything, But You Might As Well Enjoy It

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

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.

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.

The Fools Think I Am Writing Algebra But What I Am Really Writing Is Geometry.

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

How Would That Premise Stand Up If He Examined It? That Was Probably Why The Communists Were Always Cracking Down On Bohemiansism. When You Were Drunk Or When You Committed Adultery You Recognised Your Own Personal Fallability Of That So Mutable Substitute For The Apostles' Creed, The Party Line. Down With Bohemianism, The Sin Of Majakowski.

One Cat Just Leads To Another. The Place Is So Damned Big It Doesn't Really Seem As Though There Were Many Cats Until You See Them All Moving Like A Mass Migration At Feeding Time.

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

Most People Never Listen.

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

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

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.

The Only Thing That Could Spoil A Day Was People. People Were Always The Limiters Of Happiness Except For The Very Few That Were As Good As Spring Itself.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Drank A Bottle Of Wine For Company. It Was Chateau Margaux. It Was Pleasant To Be Drinking Slowly And To Be Tasting The Wine And To Be Drinking Alone. A Bottle Of Wine Was Good Company.

I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

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

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.

Defense Is The Stronger Form With The Negative Object, And Attack The Weaker Form With The Positive Object.

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

Fish In The Sea

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 Don’t. I Don’t Want Anybody Else To Touch You. I’m Silly. I Get Furious If They Touch You.

Farewell To Arms

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

In Africa A Thing Is True At First Light And A Lie By Noon And You Have No More Respect For It Than For The Lovely, Perfect Wood-fringed Lake You See Across The Sun-baked Salt Plain. You Have Walked Across That Plain In The Morning And You Know That No Such Lake Is There. But Now It Is There Absolutely True, Beautiful And Believable.

For A True Writer Each Book Should Be A New Beginning, Where He Tries Again For Something That Is Beyond Attainment.

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

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

Infantry Division

The World Breaks Everyone Or Nearly Everyone, Of Their Childish Illusions, Assumptions And Wishes, Often Painfully And Afterwards Due To The Personal Growth In Practical Experience, Insight And The Resulting Wisdom Many Are Strong At The Broken Places Just Like Mended Broken Bones Often Are, And Some People Even Have The Great Insight To Be Grateful For The Purifying Fire.

I Don't Feel Any Way,' The Girl Said. 'i Just Know Things.

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

You Know I Don't Love Any One But You. You Shouldn't Mind Because Some One Else Loved Me.

Farewell To Arms

Never Mistake Motion For Action.

Switzerland Is A Small, Steep Country, Much More Up And Down Than Sideways, And Is All Stuck Over With Large Brown Hotels Built On The Cuckoo Clock Style Of Architecture.

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.

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.

Dying Was Nothing And He Had No Picture Of It Nor Fear Of It In His Mind. But Living Was A Field Of Grain Blowing In The Wind On The Side Of A Hill. Living Was A Hawk In The Sky. Living Was An Earthen Jar Of Water In The Dust Of The Threshing With The Grain Flailed Out And The Chaff Blowing. Living Was A Horse Between Your Legs And A Carbine Under One Leg And A Hill And A Valley And A Stream With Trees Along It And The Far Side Of The Valley And The Hills Beyond.

If He Wrote It, He Could Get Rid Of It. He Had Gotten Rid Of Many Things By Writing Them.

You Never Understand Anybody That Loves You.

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

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.

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.

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

I 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.

Listen Now. When People Talk Listen Completely. Don't Be Thinking What You're Going To Say. Most People Never Listen. Nor Do They Observe.

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

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

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

You Make Something From Things That Have Happened And From Things That Exist And From All Things That You Know And All Those You Cannot Know, And You Make Something Through Your Invention That Is Truer Than Anything True And Alive, And If You Make It Well Enough, You Give It Immortality.

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

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

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.

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 English Talked With Inflected Phrases. One Phrase To Mean Everything.

Oh Jake," Brett Said, "we Could Have Had Such A Damned Good Time Together." Ahead Was A Mounted Policeman In Khaki Directing Traffic. He Raised His Baton. The Car Slowed Suddenly, Pressing Brett Against Me. Yes," I Said. "isn't It Pretty To Think So?

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

I Still Need More Healthy Rest In Order To Work At My Best. My Health Is The Main Capital I Have And I Want To Administer It Intelligently.

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.

Everyone Behaves Badly--given The Chance.

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.

I Don't Want To Be Your Friend, Baby. I Am Your Friend.

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

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.

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.

My Big Fish Must Be Somewhere.

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

There Are Many Who Do Not Know They Are Fascists But Will Find It Out When The Time Comes.

I’m Not Brave Any More Darling. I’m All Broken. They’ve Broken Me.

Farewell To Arms

I Was Always A Lonely Person When I Was With Everyone.

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

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

I Am Trying To Make, Before I Get Through, A Picture Of The Whole World--or As Much Of It As I Have Seen. Boiling It Down Always, Rather Than Spreading It Out Too Thin. (on Writing.)

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

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

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

Got Tight Last Night On Absinthe And Did Knife Tricks. Great Success Shooting The Knife Underhand Into The Piano. The Woodworms Are So Bad And Eat Hell Out Of All The Furniture That You Can Always Claim The Woodworms Did It.

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

This Was The Price You Paid For Sleeping Together. This Was The End Of The Trap. This Was What People Got For Loving Each Other.

Wine Is The Most Civilized Thing In The World.

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

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

Now He Would Never Write The Things That He Had Saved To Write Until He Knew Enough To Write Them Well. Well, He Would Not Have To Fail At Trying To Write Them Either. Maybe You Could Never Write Them, And That Was Why You Put Them Off And Delayed The Starting. Well He Would Never Know, Now.

Procrastination

Out Of All The Things You Could Not Have There Were Some Things That You Could Have And One Of Those Was To Know When You Were Happy And To Enjoy All Of It While It Was There And It Was Good.

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

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

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."

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.

There Are The Two Curses Of Spain, The Bulls And The Priests.

I Am Thee And Thou Art Me And All Of One Is The Other.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I Was Blown Up While We Were Eating Cheese.

Farewell To Arms

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

If People Bring So Much Courage To This World The World Has To Kill Them To Break Them, So Of Course It Kills Them. The World Breaks Every One And Afterward Many Are Strong At The Broken Places. But Those That Will Not Break It Kills. It Kills The Very Good And The Very Gentle And The Very Brave Impartially. If You Are None Of These You Can Be Sure It Will Kill You Too But There Will Be No Special Hurry.

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

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.

Never Mistake Movement For Action

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

I Never Liked To Hunt, You Know. There Was Always The Danger Of Having A Horse Fall On You.

If A Writer Stops Observing, He Is Finished.

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

There Is No Hunting Like The Hunting Of Man, And Those Who Have Hunted Armed Men Long Enough And Liked It, Never Care For Anything Else Thereafter.

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.

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

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

The Telephone And Visitors Are The Work Destroyers.

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

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

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

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

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

Farewell To Arms

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

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

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

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

Mice: What Is The Best Early Training For A Writer? Y.c.: An Unhappy Childhood.

Unhappy Childhood

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

The Real Reason For Not Committing Suicide Is Because You Always Know How Swell Life Gets Again After The Hell Is Over.

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

Farewell To Arms

In Modern War... You Will Die Like A Dog For No Good Reason.

All Good Books Are Alike In That They Are Truer Than If They Really Happened And After You Are Finished Reading One You Feel That It All Happened To You And After Which It All Belongs To You.

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

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.

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.

Love Is Infinitely More Endurable Than Hate.

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.

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

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

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.

And You Treat Me Wonderfully And Keep All Your Promises.

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

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.

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

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

Luck Is A Thing That Comes In Many Forms And Who Can Recognize Her?

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

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.

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

All Things Truly Wicked Start From Innocence.

Hail Nothing Full Of Nothing, Nothing Is With Thee.

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

You Have It Now And That Is All Your Whole Life Is; Now. There Is Nothing Else Than Now. There Is Neither Yesterday, Certainly, Nor Is There Any Tomorrow.

All Bad Writers Are In Love With The Epic.

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

Oh, Darling, I've Been So Miserable.

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

Human Condition

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

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

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.

Isn't It Pretty To Think So.

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