Quotes By Author: Ernest Hemingway

“The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.”

“Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.”

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”

“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.”

“You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.”

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader”

“The rain will stop, the night will end, the hurt will fade. Hope is never so lost that it can’t be found.”

“You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.”

“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.”

“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”

“It’s harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.”