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Ernest Hemingway Quotes about Writing

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In order to write about life first you must live it.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

Ernest Hemingway
Life, Writing, Order
Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Humility, Crafts
"New York Journal-American" Newspaper, July 11, 1961.

To be successful in writing, use short sentences.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Successful, Use

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Night, Nails

Live it up so you can write it down.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Live It Up

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Conversation, Good Conversation

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Ernest Hemingway
Reading, Book, Writing
"The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Simple, Thinking

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters
"Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Ernest Hemingway
Truth, Freedom, Writing
Ernest Hemingway (1992). “Complete Poems”, p.22, U of Nebraska Press

You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Stuff, Throwing

There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Great Writing

Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Action, Emotion

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Ernest Hemingway
Inspirational Life, Writing, Kids
Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Tired, Thinking

At night, never go to bed without knowing what you'll write tomorrow.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Night, Knowing

I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.

Ernest Hemingway
Farewell, Writing, Arms

Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Want

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Shining, Hammers
Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway
Powerful, Writing, Character
Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Ernest Hemingway
Book, Writing, New Beginnings
Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Fate, Needs
Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.408, Simon and Schuster

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Ernest Hemingway
Time, Writing, Vision
Ernest Hemingway (1981). “Selected Letters, 1917-1961”

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things which produced the emotion that you experienced.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Knowing, Trying
Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2192, Simon and Schuster

Easy writing makes hard reading.

Ernest Hemingway
Reading, Writing, Easy
"Paris Was Our Mistress". Book by Samuel Putnam, 1947.

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