A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Interpretation
Creating humor often requires enduring hardships and challenges.
This quote by Ernest Hemingway suggests that true comedic writing stems from the author’s experiences of suffering and struggle. It implies that the depth of one’s personal challenges can provide rich material for humor, as the contrast between pain and laughter often resonates deeply with readers.
In practice
During a writing workshop, the instructor could use this quote to emphasize the importance of drawing from personal experiences.
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.
There must be a story within him/her that wants to come out. That's the reason why 'Dil Chahta Hai,' 'Lagaan,' and 'Rang De Basanti' worked so well: Ashutosh, Farhan, and Rakesh had a story inside them. It's very important that the director should have the fire in the belly to tell the story.
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.
My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.
Your thin white face, chérie; he said, as if he saw it for the first time. Your thin white face, with its promise of debauchery only a connoisseur could detect.
Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
Cinema is consistently making a claim to particular memories, histories, ways of life, identities, and values that always presuppose some notion of difference, community, and the future. Given that films both reflect and shape public culture, they cannot be defined exclusively through a notion of artistic freedom and autonomy that removes them from any form of critical accountability.
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