He's a great writer. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party. But you can't kill the guy. He's not human.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the intense rivalry and respect between writers, where admiration can sometimes lead to extreme reactions.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway reflects on the competitive nature of writing, illustrating how the admiration for another writer's talent can provoke strong feelings, even to the extent of wishing harm upon them. The hyperbolic statement reveals Hemingway's acknowledgment of the other writer's exceptional skill, showing that true talent can evoke both envy and acknowledgment, thus suggesting that competition in art can drive individuals to extreme thoughts and actions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges and rivalries in the literary world.
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.
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.
All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.