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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.

-Ernest Hemingway

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You Know That Fiction,

Ernest Hemingway

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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.

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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.

For Her Everything Was Red, Orange, Gold-red From The Sun On The Closed Eyes, And It All Was That Color, All Of It, The Filling, The Possessing, The Having, All Of That Color, All In A Blindness Of That Color." - Ernest Hemingway.

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

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

He Saw The Girl Watching Him And He Smiled At Her. It Was An Old Smile That He Had Been Using For Fifty Years, Ever Since He First Smiled.

I Always Like It At A War. There Is Always The Chance That You Will Get Up The Next Morning And Be Killed And Not Have To Write.

Fascism Is A Lie Told By Bullies.

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.

When You Have A Child, The World Has A Hostage.

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.

In The Spring Mornings I Would Work Early While My Wife Still Slept. The Windows Were Open Wide And The Cobbles Of The Street Were Drying After The Rain.

To Be A Successful Father... There's One Absolute Rule: When You Have A Kid, Don't Look At It For The First Two Years.

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.

It Is Appearances, Characteristics And Performance That Make A Man Love An Airplane, And They, Are What Put Emotion Into One. You Love A Lot Of Things If You Live Around Them, But There Isn't Any Woman And There Isn't Any Horse, Nor Any Before Nor Any After, That Is As Lovely As A Great Airplane, And Men Who Love Them Are Faithful To Them Even Though They Leave Them For Others. A Man Has Only One Virginity To Lose In Fighters, And If It Is A Lovely Plane He Loses It To, There His Heart Will Ever Be.

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

The Smallest Coffins Are The Heaviest.

Never Mistake Motive For Action.

We Think. We Are Not Peasants. We Are Mechanics. But Even The Peasants Know Better Than To Believe In A War. Everybody Hates War. There Is A Class That Control A Country That Is Stupid And Down Not Realise Anything And Never Can. That Is Why We Have This War. Also They Make Money Out Of It.

Work Could Cure Almost Anything

Happiness In Intelligent People Is The Rarest Thing I Know.

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

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.

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.

Pound's Crazy. All Poets Are.... They Have To Be. You Don't Put A Poet Like Pound In The Loony Bin.

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.

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

You Did Not Kill The Fish Only To Keep Alive And To Sell For Food, He Thought. You Killed Him For Pride And Because You Are A Fisherman. You Loved Him When He Was Alive And You Loved Him After. If You Love Him, It Is Not A Sin To Kill Him. Or Is It More?

Wine Is The Most Civilized Thing In The World.

I Read My Own Books Sometimes To Cheer Me When It Is Hard To Write, And Then I Remember That It Was Always Difficult, And How Nearly Impossible It Was Sometimes.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Human Condition

Being Against Evil Doesn't Make You Good. Tonight I Was Against It And Then I Was Evil Myself. I Could Feel It Coming Just Like A Tide... I Just Want To Destroy Them. But When You Start Taking Pleasure In It You Are Awfully Close To The Thing You're Fighting.

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.

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.

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

He Had Always Known What I Did Not Know And What, When I Learned It, I Was Always Able To Forget. But I Did Not Know That Then, Although I Learned It Later.

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

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.

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.

Anyone Who Says He Wants To Be A Writer And Isn't Writing, Doesn't.

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

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.

She Is Kind And Very Beautiful. But She Can Be So Cruel And It Comes So Suddenly And Such Birds That Fly, Dipping And Hunting, With Their Small Sad Voices Are Made Too Delicately For The Sea.

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

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

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 Fall In Love?" "always," Said The Count. "i Am Always In Love.

Falling In Love

Never Fall In Love

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.

Of All Men The Drunkard Is The Foulest. The Thief When He Is Not Stealing Is Like Another. The Extortioner Does Not Practice In The Home. The Murderer When He Is At Home Can Wash His Hands. But The Drunkard Stinks And Vomits In This Own Bed And Dissolves His Organs In Alcohol.

But Did Thee Feel The Earth Move?

'safety', The Wife Of Pablo Said. 'there Is No Such Thing As Safety. There Are So Many Seeking Safety Here Now That They Make A Great Danger. In Seeking Safety Now You Lose All.'

The People That I Liked And Had Not Met Went To The Big Cafes Because They Were Lost In Them And No One Noticed Them And They Could Be Alone In Them And Be Together.

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

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 ... You Will Never Be Stuck. Always Stop While You Are Going Good And Don't Think About It Or Worry About It Until You Start To Write The Next Day. That Way Your Subconscious Will Work On It All The Time. But If You Think About It Consciously Or Worry About It You Will Kill It And Your Brain Will Be Tired Before You Start.

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

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

Anglers Have A Way Of Romanticizing Their Battles With Fish.

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

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

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

As I Ate The Oysters With Their Strong Taste Of The Sea And Their Faint Metallic Taste That The Cold White Wine Washed Away, Leaving Only The Sea Taste And The Succulent Texture, And As I Drank Their Cold Liquid From Each Shell And Washed It Down With The Crisp Taste Of The Wine, I Lost The Empty Feeling And Began To Be Happy And To Make Plans.

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

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

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

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

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.

Everybody Is Friends When Things Are Bad Enough.

Perhaps Wars Weren't Won Anymore. Maybe They Went On Forever. Maybe It Was Another Hundred Years' War.

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

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

They Can't Yank A Novelist Like They Can A Pitcher. A Novelist Has To Go The Full Nine, Even If It Kills Him.

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.

Your Blood Coagulates Beautifully.

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.

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.

Write Hard And Clear About What Hurts.

A Good Life Is Not Measured By Any Biblical Span.

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.

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.

A Bottle Of Wine Was Good Company.

Look At Things And Listen And Feel.

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

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

All Things Truly Wicked Start From Innocence.

Religion Is The Opium Of The Poor.

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.

There Is A Mystery In All Great Writing And That Mystery Does Not Dissect Out. It Continues And Is Always Valid.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Sometimes You Know The Story. Sometimes You Make It Up As You Go Along And Have No Idea How It Will Come Out.

I Wish I Could Write Well Enough To Write About Aircraft. Faulkner Did It Very Well In Pylon But You Cannot Do Something Someone Else Has Done Though You Might Have Done It If They Hadn't.

He Would Lie In The Bed And Finally, With Daylight, He Would Go To Sleep. After All, He Said To Himself, It Is Probably Only Insomnia. Many Must Have It.

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

How Little We Know Of What There Is To Know.

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.

I’m Trying In All My Stories To Get The Feeling Of The Actual Life Across—not To Just Depict Life—or Criticize It—but To Actually Make It Alive. So That When You Have Read Something By Me You Actually Experience The Thing. You Can’t Do This Without Putting In The Bad And The Ugly As Well As What Is Beautiful. Because If It Is All Beautiful You Can’t Believe In It. Things Aren’t That Way.

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.

If A Writer Stops Observing, He Is Finished.

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

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

It's Silly Not To Hope. It's A Sin He Thought.

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

I Write Description In Longhand Because That's Hardest For Me And You're Closer To The Paper When You Work By Hand, But I Use The Typewriter For Dialogue Because People Speak Like A Typewriter Works.

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.

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

No Horse Named Morbid Ever Won A Race.

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

However You Make Your Living Is Where Your Talent Lies.

You're Beautiful, Like A May Fly.

You Re Beautiful

Isn't It Pretty To Think So.

I Didn't Want To Kiss You Goodbye — That Was The Trouble — I Wanted To Kiss You Good Night — And There's A Lot Of Difference.

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.)

War Is Not Won By Victory.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

A Writer Is Like A Gypsy. He Owes No Allegiance To Any Government. If He Is A Good Writer He Will Never Like Any Government He Lives Under. His Hand Should Be Against It And Its Hand Will Always Be Against Him.

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

For A Poet He Threw A Very Accurate Milk Bottle.

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

Farewell To Arms

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.

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.

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.

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

You're Going To Write Straight And Simple And Good Now. That's The Start.''what If I'm Not Straight And Simple And Good? Do You Think I Can Write That Way?''write How You Are But Make It Straight.

Do Not Think About Sin, He Thought. There Are Enough Problems Now Without Sin. Also I Have No Understanding Of It.

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.

You'll Lose It, If You Talk About It

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Farewell To Arms

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.

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

Every Damn Thing Is Your Own Fault, If You Are Any Good.

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.

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

I Belong To This Notebook And This Pencil.

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).

Courage Is Grace Under Pressure.

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.

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

Before You React, Think. Before You Spend, Earn. Before You Criticize, Wait. Before You Quit, Try.

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

An Intelligent Man Is Sometimes Forced To Be Drunk To Spend Time With His Fools.

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

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.

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

Nothing To Lose

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.

When You Give Power To An Executive You Do Not Know Who Will Be Filling That Position When The Time Of Crisis Comes.

Times Of Crisis

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

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 Rule On How To Write.

When You Love You Wish To Do Things For. You Wish To Sacrifice For. You Wish To Serve.

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.

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.

I Used To Play Cello. My Mother Kept Me Out Of School A Whole Year To Study Music And Counterpoint. She Thought I Had Ability, But I Was Absolutely Without Talent.

A Man's Got To Take A Lot Of Punishment To Write A Really Funny Book.

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.

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.

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

Everything That A Painter Did Or That A Writer Wrote Was A Part Of His Training And Preparation For What He Was To Do.

Wars Are Caused By Undefended Wealth.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

They Wrote In The Old Days That It Is Sweet And Fitting To Die For One's Country. But In Modern War, There Is Nothing Sweet Nor Fitting In Your Dying. You Will Die Like A Dog For No Good Reason.

Oh, Now, Now, Now, The Only Now, And Above All Now, And There Is No Other Now But Thou Now And Now Is Thy Prophet.

Being Against Evil Doesn't Make You Good.

Good Against Evil

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

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

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

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

The Things Of The Night Cannot Be Explained In The Day, Because They Do Not Then Exist.

We Would Be Together And Have Our Books And At Night Be Warm In Bed Together With The Windows Open And The Stars Bright.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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