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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.

-Ernest Hemingway

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You Expected To Be

Ernest Hemingway

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

If You Stop Complaining And Asking For What You Never Will Get, You Will Have A Good Life. A Good Life Is Not Measured By Any Biblical Span.

Write Hard And Clear About What Hurts.

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.

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 Only Place Where You Could See Life And Death, I. E., Violent Death Now That The Wars Were Over, Was In The Bull Ring And I Wanted Very Much To Go To Spain Where I Could Study It. I Was Trying To Learn To Write, Commencing With The Simplest Things, And One Of The Simplest Things Of All And The Most Fundamental Is Violent Death.

No Pilar," Agustin Said. "you Are Not Smart. You Are Brave. You Are Loyal. You Have Decision. You Have Intuition. Much Decision And Much Heart. But You Are Not Smart.

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

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

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

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.

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 Would Write One True Sentence, And Then Go On From There.

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

All Thinking Men Are Atheists.

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

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.

If Two People Love Each Other There Can Be No Happy End To It.

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

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.

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

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

When Things Are Going Well, I Like To Have People To Share It With. I've Been Alone In Troubled Times, And I Don't Mind That. Some Things Have To Be Endured Alone. As Hemingway Said, The Human Being Is Strong In All The Broken Places.

Hombre, There Are Bodegas Open All Night Long.

I Am One Of Those Who Like To Stay Late At The Cafe," The Older Waiter Said. "with All Those Who Do Not Want To Go To Bed. With All Those Who Need A Light For The Night." "i Want To Go Home And Into Bed." "we Are Of Two Different Kinds," The Older Waiter Said. He Was Now Dressed To Go Home. "it Is Not Only A Question Of Youth And Confidence Although Those Things Are Very Beautiful. Each Night. I Am Reluctant To Close Up Because There May Be Someone Who Needs The Cafe.

Drinking Is A Way Of Ending The Day.

One Battle Doesn't Make A Campagin, But Critics Treat One Book, Good Or Bad, Like A Whole War.

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.

Why Do Old Men Wake So Early? Is It To Have One Longer Day?

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

When You Have Shot One Bird Flying You Have Shot All Birds Flying. They Are All Different And They Fly In Different Ways But The Sensation Is The Same And The Last One Is As Good As The First.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There's No One Thing That's True. It's All True.

The First Draft Of Anything Is Sh*t.

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

I Am Like A Blind Pig When I Work.

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.

The Best Writing Is Certainly When You Are In Love

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Part Of You Died Each Year When The Leaves Fell From The Trees And Their Branches Were Bare Against The Wind And The Cold, Wintry Light.

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

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.

Being Against Evil Doesn't Make You Good.

Good Against Evil

You Know That Fiction, Prose Rather, Is Possibly The Roughest Trade Of All In Writing. You Do Not Have The Reference, The Old Important Reference. You Have The Sheet Of Blank Paper, The Pencil, And The Obligation To Invent Truer Than Things Can Be True. You Have To Take What Is Not Palpable And Make It Completely Palpable And Also Have It Seem Normal And So That It Can Become A Part Of Experience Of The Person Who Reads It.

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

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.

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

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

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

You Must Hold Hard To Life And Do It. But Life Is A Cheap Thing Beside A Man's Work. The Only Thing Is That You Need It. Hold It Tight.

I Don't Like To Leave Anything,' The Man Said. 'i Don't Like To Leave Things Behind.

Never Confuse Movement With Action.

There Is Nothing Noble In Being Superior To Your Fellow Men. True Nobility Lies In Being Superior To Your Former Self.

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

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

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

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.

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

Anglers Have A Way Of Romanticizing Their Battles With Fish.

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

You're Beautiful, Like A May Fly.

You Re Beautiful

Every Day Is A New Day. It Is Better To Be Lucky. But I Would Rather Be Exact. Then When Luck Comes You Are Ready.

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

Remember To Get The Weather In Your Damn Book-weather Is Very Important.

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

They Say The Seeds Of What We Will Do Are In All Of Us, But It Always Seemed To Me That In Those Who Make Jokes In Life The Seeds Are Covered With Better Soil And With A Higher Grade Of Manure.

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.

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

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.

It Was Like Certain Dinners I Remember From The War. There Was Much Wine, An Ignored Tension, And A Feeling Of Things Coming That You Could Not Prevent Happening. Under The Wine I Lost The Disgusted Feeling And Was Happy. It Seemed They Were All Such Nice People.

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

Farewell To Arms

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.

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

I May Not Be As Stong As I Think, But I Know Many Tricks And I Have Resolution.

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.

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

Some People Show Evil As A Great Racehorse Shows Breeding. They Have The Dignity Of A Hard Chancre.

In The Early Morning On The Lake Sitting In The Stern Of The Boat With His Father Rowing, He Felt Quite Sure That He Would Never Die.

You Write A Book Like That You're Fond Of Over The Years, Then You See That Happen To It, It's Like Pissing In Your Father's Beer.

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

Show The Readers Everything, Tell Them Nothing.

Religion Is The Opium Of The Poor.

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

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

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

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

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.

Any Man Who Eats Dessert Is Not Drinking Enough.

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

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.

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

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

Use Short Sentences. Use Short First Paragraphs. Use Vigorous English. Be Positive, Not Negative.

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

Never Mistake Motive For Action.

You Can't Get Away From Yourself By Moving From One Place To Another.

Lost Generation

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.

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

I'm Not Going To Get Into The Ring With Tolstoy.

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.

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.

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

Hunger Is Good Discipline.

Good Discipline

Oh, Darling, I've Been So Miserable.

The Only Kind Of Writing Is Rewriting.

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

Farewell To Arms

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.

Love Is Something That Hangs Up Behind The Bathroom Door And Smells Of Lysol.

But Life Isn't Hard To Manage When You've Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

Don't You Like To Write Letters? I Do Because It's Such A Swell Way To Keep From Working And Yet Feel You've Done Something.

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

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

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

Farewell To Arms

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

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.

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

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

The Thing Is To Become A Master And In Your Old Age To Acquire The Courage To Do What Children Did When They Knew Nothing.

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.

I Was Always Embarresed By The Words 'sacred,' 'glorious,' And 'sacrifice' And The Expression 'in Vain.' We Had Heard Them, Sometimes Standing In The Rain Almost Out Of Earshot, So That Only The Shouted Words Came Through, And Had Read Them On Proclamations That Were Slapped Up By Billposters Over Other Proclamations, Now For A Long Time, And I Had Seen Nothing Sacred, And The Things That Were Glorious Had No Glory And The Sacrifices Were Like The Stock Yards At Chicago If Nothing Was Done With The Meat Except To Bury It.

Time Is The Least Thing We Have.

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

All Bad Writers Are In Love With The Epic.

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

Decadence Is A Difficult Word To Use Since It Has Become Little More Than A Term Of Abuse Applied By Critics To Anything They Do Not Yet Understand Or Which Seems To Differ From Their Moral Concepts.

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

Organizations For Writers Palliate The Writer's Loneliness, But I Doubt If They Improve His Writing.... For He Does His Work Alone And If He Is A Good Enough Writer He Must Face Eternity, Or The Lack Of It, Each Day.

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

Let Those Who Want To Save The World If You Can Get To See It Clear And As A Whole. Then Any Part You Make Will Represent The Whole If It's Made Truly. The Thing To Do Is Work And Learn To Make It.

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

There Are Some Things Which Cannot Be Learned Quickly, And Time, Which Is All We Have, Must Be Paid Heavily For Their Acquiring.

Acquiring Things

(world War I) Was The Most Colossal, Murderous, Mismanaged Butchery That Has Ever Taken Place On Earth. Any Writer Who Said Otherwise Lied, So The Writers Either Wrote Propaganda, Shut Up, Or Fought.

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

He 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

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.

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.

Anglers Have A Way Of Romanticizing Their Battles With Fish And Of Forgetting That The Fish Has A Hook In His Mouth, His Gullet, Or His Belly And That His Gameness Is Really An Extreme Of Panic In Which He Runs, Leaps, And Pulls To Get Away Until He Dies. It Would Seem To Be Enough Advantage To The Angler That The Fish Has The Hook In His Mouth Rather Than The Angler.

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.

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

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

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

Most People Are Heartless About Turtles Because A Turtle's Heart Will Beat For Hours After He Has Been Cut Up And Butchered. But The Old Man Thought, I Have Such A Heart Too And My Feet And Hands Are Like Theirs.

I 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.

There Is Nothing You Can Do Except Try To Write It The Way That It Was. So You Must Write Each Day Better Than You Possibly Can And Use The Sorrow That You Have Now To Make You Know How The Early Sorrow Came. And You Must Always Remember The Things You Believed Because If You Know Them They Will Be There In The Writing And You Won’t Betray Them. The Writing Is The Only Progress You Make.

The First And Most Important Thing Of All, At Least For Writers Today, Is To Strip Language Clean, To Lay It Bare Down To The Bone.

To Be Successful In Writing, Use Short Sentences.

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

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

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

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

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.

Writing Is The Clumsy Attempt To Find Symbols For Wordlessness.

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

Up The Road, In His Shack, The Old Man Was Sleeping Again. He Was Still Sleeping On His Face And The Boy Was Sitting By Him Watching Him. The Old Man Was Dreaming About The Lions.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

[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)

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.

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

But Did Thee Feel The Earth Move?

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

Fear Of Death Increases In Exact Proportion To Increase In Wealth.

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

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

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

Perhaps I Should Not Have Been A Fisherman, He Thought. But That Was The Thing That I Was Born For.

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.

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

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

The Hard Part About Writing A Novel Is Finishing It.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

Farewell To Arms

We Have Come Out Of The Time When Obedience, The Acceptance Of Discipline, Intelligent Courage And Resolution Were Most Important, Into That More Difficult Time When It Is A Man's Duty To Understand His World Rather Than Simply Fight For It.

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Douglas Preston

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