QuoteProject
The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.
Ernest Hemingway
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The creative process often unfolds in unexpected ways, requiring the artist to adapt quickly.

This quote by Ernest Hemingway reflects the dynamic nature of creativity and the experience of an artist as they engage with their work. It suggests that while the artist initiates the process of creation, the story or artwork takes on a life of its own, flowing with its own momentum and leading the creator to chase after ideas and inspiration that emerge spontaneously.

Themes

CreativityWritingArtInspirationImprovisation

In practice

Example use cases

In a creative writing workshop to encourage students to embrace their ideas.

More from Ernest Hemingway

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.
Ernest HemingwayRead
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
Ernest HemingwayRead
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.
Ernest HemingwayRead
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.
Ernest HemingwayRead
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
Ernest HemingwayRead
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.
Ernest HemingwayRead

Similar quotes

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world
Robert CaroRead
One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.
Anne FadimanRead
When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead
It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.
C.D. WrightRead
I have been a designer all my life, and design, for me, is to share love and trust and show the future in a beautiful way. I have worked on this principle all my life.
Marcel WandersRead
My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.
Kurt CobainRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Ernest Hemingway | QuoteProject