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.
Interpretation
Riding a bicycle allows for a deeper understanding of a place through physical engagement with its landscape.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway emphasizes the intimate connection one gains with the surroundings while riding a bicycle. The act of pedaling up hills and enjoying the downhill coasting provides a unique and immersive experience, allowing one to truly appreciate the geography and beauty of a country in a way that passive transportation cannot.
In practice
During a travel blog discussion about the best ways to explore a new city.
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.
Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.
I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.
Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody whoβll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.
I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'
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