Ernest Hemingway’s strong influence on the craft of writing and American literature remains unmatched. He’s one of the most admired writers of the 20th century, having written and published several novels, short stories, and non-fiction works even after his death. Apart from his literary works, the public can draw inspiration or encouragement from Hemingway quotes on writing.
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899, American writer and journalist Ernest Hemingway lived an adventurous life not limited to writing. He would travel widely to go bullfighting, fishing, skiing, hunting, and more. His adventures weren’t always fun, as he faced two successive plane crashes that almost killed him and suffered from mental health conditions. Despite this, his experiences laid the foundation of most of his writing. His famous works include “The Sun Also Rises,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “The Old Man and the Sea,” and “A Farewell to Arms.” Soon enough, he was a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner and an inspiration for many renowned and aspiring writers today.
Hemingway’s lucid yet deliberate writing style can transport his readers to his characters’ world, letting them explore the story’s depth on their own. Moreover, as an influential American literary icon, it’s unsurprising for fans and writers to come across his words of wisdom when it comes to his field. If you’re a budding or passionate writer, Hemingway quotes on writing deliver the inspiration you need, including words on how to improve your craft.
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Hemingway Quotes About Writing
Hemingway’s writing technique and powerful narration earned him several awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. These achievements did not only prove the beauty of his works but also his unparalleled writing style. Besides the fact that writers can benefit from the words he left regarding writing, they also cater to business owners, companies, or anyone who aspire to practice their craft.
The list below shows the quotes about writing by Ernest Hemingway.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.
Ernest Hemingway
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
Ernest Hemingway
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 Hemingway
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest Hemingway
I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
Ernest Hemingway
I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.
Ernest Hemingway
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Ernest Hemingway
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.
Ernest Hemingway
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Ernest Hemingway
A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Ernest Hemingway
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don’t cheat with it.
Ernest Hemingway
The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
Ernest Hemingway
It is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.
Ernest Hemingway
The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
Ernest Hemingway
Remember to get the weather in your damn book–weather is very important.
Ernest Hemingway
Worry destroys the ability to write
Ernest Hemingway
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
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master
Ernest Hemingway
Write drunk; edit sober.
Ernest Hemingway
My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything.
Ernest Hemingway
To be successful in writing, use short sentences.
Ernest Hemingway
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Ernest Hemingway
What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?
Ernest Hemingway
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
Ernest Hemingway
You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.
Ernest Hemingway
You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
Ernest Hemingway
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.
Ernest Hemingway
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
Ernest Hemingway
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
It’s harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.
Ernest Hemingway
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
Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.
Ernest Hemingway
Don’t you like to write letters? I do because it’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something.
Ernest Hemingway
It was a pleasant café, 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
You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
Ernest Hemingway
Easy writing makes hard reading.
Ernest Hemingway
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
There is no such thing as great writing – there is only great re-writing!
Ernest Hemingway
The further you go in writing the more alone you are.
Ernest Hemingway
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
All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.
Ernest Hemingway
If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.
Ernest Hemingway
There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.
Ernest Hemingway
Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.
Ernest Hemingway
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
Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because that gives you perspective
Ernest Hemingway
People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.
Ernest Hemingway
I write description in longhand because that’s hardest for me and you’re closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.
Ernest Hemingway
Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.
Ernest Hemingway
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
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
Ernest Hemingway
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
Write as well as you can and finish what you start.
Ernest Hemingway
At night, never go to bed without knowing what you’ll write tomorrow.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn’t.
Ernest Hemingway
Live it up so you can write it down.
Ernest Hemingway
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
The ocean is worth writing about just as man is.
Ernest Hemingway
The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.
Ernest Hemingway
You write a book like that you’re fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it’s like pissing in your father’s beer.
Ernest Hemingway
I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph.
Ernest Hemingway
Write the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works.
Ernest Hemingway
Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.
Ernest Hemingway
You’re going to write straight and simple and good now. That’s the start. What if I’m not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?’ Write how you are but make it straight.
Ernest Hemingway
Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.
Ernest Hemingway
Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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Hemingway Quotes for Writers
Many writers, including the most popular ones in the past century, had a special adoration for Ernest Hemingway. His novels, writing strategies, and way of thinking influenced numerous budding and professional writers, giving them a glimpse into his mind. However, his impact doesn’t end there. Hemingway himself left remarkable words that writers of today’s age will still find valuable despite existing in an ever-changing world.
Here is a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s quotes for writers.
Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.
Ernest Hemingway
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
Ernest Hemingway
If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.
Ernest Hemingway
It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything.
Ernest Hemingway
Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.
Ernest Hemingway
I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.
Ernest Hemingway
It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again.
Ernest Hemingway
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
Ernest Hemingway
When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day.
Ernest Hemingway
When I had to write it, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build. In the meantime I would write a long story about whatever I knew best.
Ernest Hemingway
What did I know best that I had not written about and lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most? There was no choice at all.
Ernest Hemingway
It was a very simple story called “Out of Season” and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.
Ernest Hemingway
All I must do now was stay sound and good in my head until morning when I would start to work again.
Ernest Hemingway
You shouldn’t write if you can’t write.
Ernest Hemingway
I said that I did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent.
Ernest Hemingway
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph.
Ernest Hemingway
I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.
Ernest Hemingway
After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.
Ernest Hemingway
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Ernest Hemingway
Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn’t writing, doesn’t.
Ernest Hemingway
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
All bad writers are in love with the epic.
Ernest Hemingway
As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
A writer’s problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it is such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.
Ernest Hemingway
A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
Ernest Hemingway
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Ernest Hemingway
Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.
Ernest Hemingway
Those who say they want to be writers, and aren’t writing, don’t.
Ernest Hemingway
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
What a writer has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.
Ernest Hemingway
A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
Ernest Hemingway
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
If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Books
Hemingway’s sister, Marcelline, once wrote about his brother’s reading habits. They did a lot of reading during their younger days, and this love only deepened as he aged. A few of his reasons for reading and loving books are to free his mind, relax, learn, and recharge. Moreover, he didn’t limit himself to reading books—he only had time to read a newspaper and other publications.
If you’re looking for Ernest Hemingway’s words about books, the list below is what you need!
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
Ernest Hemingway
Remember to get the weather in your damn book-weather is very important.
Ernest Hemingway
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Ernest Hemingway
If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.
Ernest Hemingway
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 it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
Ernest Hemingway
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning, where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.
Ernest Hemingway
I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Ernest Hemingway
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. … I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things
Ernest Hemingway
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
Ernest Hemingway
Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.
Ernest Hemingway
In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers’ books. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves. Joyce was a very great writer and he would only explain what he was doing to jerks. Other writers that he respected were supposed to be able to know what he was doing by reading it.
Ernest Hemingway
If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.
Ernest Hemingway
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
How do you tell a valuable French book?’ ‘First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
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Most Inspiring Ernest Hemingway Quotes
Ernest Hemingway left behind an impressive body of masterpieces, so it’s natural for aspirants and professionals alike to treat him as an inspiration. His life, writing journey, including his ups and downs, and how he continued, hold many lessons and advice that many can find motivating or encouraging. It’s not limited to writers, as his words continue to inspire even those outside the literary field.
Everyone faces different struggles in writing, so here’s a collection of Hemingway’s most inspiring quotes to help you with it.
Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done–so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.
Ernest Hemingway
I have to write to be happy whether I get paid for it or not. But it is a hell of a disease to be born with. I like to do it. Which is even worse. That makes it from a disease into a vice. Then I want to do it better than anybody has ever done it which makes it into an obsession. An obsession is terrible. Hope you haven’t gotten any. That’s the only one I’ve got left.
Ernest Hemingway
Ordinarily I never read anything before I write in the morning to try and bite on the old nail with no help, no influence and no one giving you a wonderful example or sitting looking over your shoulder.
Ernest Hemingway
All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices.
Ernest Hemingway
Don’t let yourself slip and get any perfect characters… keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.
Ernest Hemingway
In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.
Ernest Hemingway
Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.
Ernest Hemingway
The more I’m let alone and not worried the better I can function.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes On Literature
It’s impossible to ignore Ernest Hemingway’s prolific contribution to literature. He helped set the field off on a new course, his writing style becoming one of the hallmarks of his literature. Furthermore, his distinct influence on modern writers is undeniable. His insight in writing and literature continues to thrive as the world ages, even as a new generation emerges.
The following compilation displays Hemingway’s quotes about literature.
I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
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
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
When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
Ernest Hemingway
There can be no great literature in America until her writers have learned to trust her implicitly and love her devoutly.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Work
As one of the highly acclaimed American writers of the 20th century and journalist, Ernest Hemingway most likely developed a particular insight on work as part of writing. Whether it’s about work habits or getting the job done, there are words from Hemingway that the generation today can benefit from just by learning or being familiar with it.
Explore Hemingway’s quotes on work through the collection below.
You must be prepared to work always without applause.
Ernest Hemingway
The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.
Ernest Hemingway
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 it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
Ernest Hemingway
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
Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day’s work.
Ernest Hemingway
My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Life
Like everyone else, Hemingway’s life wasn’t a fairytale. He wasn’t a writer from the start. He was a former reporter, journalist, and volunteer for an ambulance unit in World War I. Behind his success and legacy lies the ups and unfortunate events. Sadly, he experienced depression, two successive plane crashes, third-degree burns, later succumbing to death through suicide. Still, during his life as a writer, he used his experiences, good and bad, on various occasions, including his literary pieces.
Check out Hemingway’s quotes about life in the following collection.
In order to write about life first you must live it.
Ernest Hemingway
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
Ernest Hemingway
The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.
Ernest Hemingway
It is a miserable thing to have people writing about your private life while you are alive. I have tried to stop it all that I could but there have been many abuses by people I trusted. You cannot stop trusting people in life but I have learned to be a little bit careful. The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
The only place where you could see life and death, i. e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it. I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Talent
Hemingway’s words of wisdom aren’t limited to writing, literature, or books. He was a man of talent, so it’s unsurprising if he, himself, contributed quotes about such. Although there isn’t much in this field, those words are enough to express his thought about talent and its contribution to someone’s life. If this captured your interest, take a look at the list below!
Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.
Ernest Hemingway
However you make your living is where your talent lies.
Ernest Hemingway
First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Time
Despite having a short-lived life, Hemingway accomplished and experienced many things outside his writing journey. Of course, Ernest Hemingway’s success did not happen overnight. He used his available time to satisfy his passion for writing, not leaving behind his other hobbies.
Speaking of time and its value, the quick list below shows Ernest Hemingway’s quotes about time.
All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
Ernest Hemingway
Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
Ernest Hemingway
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Hemingway Quotes About Training
Like most hobbies or professions, writing also requires training. Ernest Hemingway was a prolific writer, but that doesn’t free him from preparation or training. That includes writing prose or short story. If you’re someone who needs a little push when it comes to writing or any other field, check out the collection below! The following are Hemingway’s quotes about training, possibly giving you the motivation you desired.
Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do.
Ernest Hemingway
Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.
Ernest Hemingway
My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.
Ernest Hemingway
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One of the greatest American 20th-century writers and journalists, Ernest Hemingway’s impact on literature and writers in the field is incomparable. His brilliant writing style, storytelling skill, and passion for writing contributed to the legacy he left for future generations to ponder. Hence, it’s natural for people to search for his quotes or words of wisdom, especially for anything related to writing. They, like him, remain timeless in this fast-changing world.
Need more inspiration on writing other than these quotes of Ernest Hemingway? Check out our collection of quotes on writing from other authors here.
