'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.
Interpretation
Hemingway reflects on the struggle and creativity involved in writing.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway acknowledges the continuous challenge of writing, where each day presents a new set of possibilities and uncertainties. While he understands the larger themes of his work, it is the day-to-day creative process that allows him to explore and invent the narrative, highlighting the interplay between knowledge and imagination in the craft of writing.
In practice
A writing workshop where participants discuss the daily struggles of creating a narrative.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
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.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
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.
Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue
The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.
I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.
[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.
The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.
Burmese authors and artists can play the role that artists everywhere play. They help to mold the outlook of a society - not the whole outlook, and they are not the only ones to mold the outlook of society, but they have an important role to play there.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.