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 authorβs experiences of suffering and struggle. It implies that the depth of oneβs 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.
I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.
I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with other.
If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
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