Ernest Hemingway

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.

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.

We have very primitive emotions,” he said . “It's impossible not to be competitive. Spoils everything, though.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it

And you'll always love me won't you? Yes And the rain won't make any difference? No

Keep right on lying to me. That's what I want you to do.

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.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.

But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

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.)

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

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel.