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Ernest Hemingway Quotes about Writing - Page 5

All Ernest Hemingway Quotes Age Alcohol Appreciation Architecture Army Art Atheist Beer Bones Children Coffee Country Courage Death Difficulty Dignity Discipline Drinking Dying Earth Evil Falling In Love Fear Feelings Fighting Food Fun Funny Giving Grace Hard Times Hate Heart Heaven Hell Home Honesty Honor House Humility Hunting Hurt Imagination Immortality Inspirational Inspiring Judging Kissing Knowledge Language Learning Life Listening Literature Loneliness Love Luck Lying Military Moon Morning Motivational Pain Past Peace Pleasure Pride Quality Quitting Rain Reading Regret Risk Romantic Love Running Sacrifice School Sin Sleep Sorrow Sports Spring Style Suffering Talent Time Today Training Travel Truth Waiting Wall War Water Wife Wine Winning Wisdom Work Worry Writing quotes

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Speak, Should

Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Talking, Cracks

Ernest Hemingway, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (1986). “Conversations with Ernest Hemingway”, p.111, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.

Ernest Hemingway

Wall, Writing, Editors

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

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Ernest Hemingway

Loneliness, Writing, Organization

Bryan Patrick Harnetiaux, Ernest Hemingway (1995). “The Snows of Kilimanjaro: A Full-length Play”, p.4, Dramatic Publishing

I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Men, Wonder

Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.498, Simon and Schuster

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

Ernest Hemingway

Time, Writing, Important

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Ernest Hemingway

Girl, Writing, Hunting

Ernest Hemingway, Nick Lyons, Jack Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on Fishing”, p.96, Simon and Schuster

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Events, Assuming

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

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Good Luck, Long

Ernest Hemingway, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (1986). “Conversations with Ernest Hemingway”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Doe, Mystery

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

Ernest Hemingway

Liars, Taken, Writing

Ernest Hemingway, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (1986). “Conversations with Ernest Hemingway”, p.146, Univ. Press of Mississippi

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Sad And Happy, Stories

Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Water, Movement

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

Ernest Hemingway

Moving, Writing, Advantage

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Ernest Hemingway

Death, Writing, Stories

Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2261, Simon and Schuster

You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Next Day, Trying

Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.10, Melville House

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Cities, Paris

Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.102, Simon and Schuster

Never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you've seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That's good practice, but it isn't creative writing.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Practice, Giving

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Men, Degrees

Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Procrastination, Trying

Ernest Hemingway (2002). “The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway”, p.57, Simon and Schuster

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life - and one is as good as another.

Ernest Hemingway

Book, Writing, Lucky

Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.305, Simon and Schuster

The further you go in writing the more alone you are. Most of your best and oldest friends die. Others move away. You do not see them except rarely, but you write and have much the same contact with them as though you were together at the café in the old days. You exchange comic, sometimes cheerfully obscene and irresponsible letters, and it is almost as good as talking. But you are more alone because that is how you must work and the time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you feel you have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.

Ernest Hemingway

Moving, Writing, Talking

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Training, Dinner

Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.143, Simon and Schuster

Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Cost, Pay

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)

Ernest Hemingway

Writing, Trying, World

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