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Ernest Hemingway Quotes about Writing - Page 6

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To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Mean, Men
Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.39, Melville House

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

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

I always like it at a war. There is always the chance that you will get up the next morning and be killed and not have to write.

Ernest Hemingway
Morning, War, Writing

I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Goes On, Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Good Day, Two
Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.11, Melville House

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Water, Feelings
Death in the Afternoon ch. 16 (1932)

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.

Ernest Hemingway
Notebook, Coffee, Writing

There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.

Ernest Hemingway
War, Book, Writing
Ernest Hemingway, William Kozlenko (1942). “Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time”, New York : Crown Publishers

I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.

Ernest Hemingway
Hurt, Writing, Patriotic
Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.432, Simon and Schuster

Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.

Ernest Hemingway
Country, Writing, Printing
Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.58, Hamilton Books

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Stories
Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Law, Addresses
Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.594, Simon and Schuster

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

Ernest Hemingway
Dog, Writing, Sisterhood
Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.

Ernest Hemingway
Honesty, Writing, Editing
Men at War introduction (1942)

Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Symbols, Clumsy

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Ernest Hemingway
Art, Writing, Novelists
"How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?" by Lillian Ross, www.newyorker.com. May 13, 1950.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, People
Ernest Hemingway, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (1986). “Conversations with Ernest Hemingway”, p.114, Univ. Press of Mississippi

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. 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 again.

Ernest Hemingway
Morning, Book, Writing
Source: www.mhpbooks.com

Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Years, Trying
Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.308, Simon and Schuster

Write as well as you can and finish what you start.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Wells
"Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917 - 1961". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1981.

Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Comfort, Each Day
Ernest Hemingway, Sean Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on Hunting”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Stories, Decided
Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.428, Simon and Schuster

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

Ernest Hemingway
Real, Writing, Two
"By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades".

When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.

Ernest Hemingway
Book, Writing, Good Friend

I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you

Ernest Hemingway
Writing, Thinking, Should
Ernest Hemingway (1981). “Selected Letters, 1917-1961”

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