A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that fiction writers create stories from imagination and experience, often bending the truth.
Ernest Hemingway's quote reflects the nature of a fiction writer's craft, implying that writers are not merely recounting reality; instead, they are drawing upon their own experiences and the knowledge of others to fabricate narratives. This 'lying' is not a moral failing but rather an essential part of storytelling that allows for creativity and exploration of human experience beyond factual recounting.
In practice
In a speech about the power of storytelling, one might quote Hemingway to emphasize the importance of imagination in writing.
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.
She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.
Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.
Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom.
I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.
One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.