Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was a worldwide acclaimed American novelist, prolific short-story writer, and tremendous journalist. To this day Hemingway is referenced as being at the forefront of introducing a much more succinct and overall understated writing style to the literary world that would go on to influence other 20th-century writers to no end. The majority of Hemingway’s work was published between the 1920s and the mid-1950s. These included seven novels, six short-story collections, and two non-fiction works. During his life, Hemingway would eventually go on to be awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
1. On books
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
2. On the writing process
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
3. On happiness
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
4. On sleep
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”
5. On falling in love
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
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6. On being prideful
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.”
7. On finding strength through pain
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
8. On the power of one true sentence
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
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9. On listening
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
10. On luck
“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
11. On courage
“Courage is grace under pressure.”
12. On inner struggles
“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
13. On one’s life journey
“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the detail sof how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
14. On a cat’s honesty
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty. Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
15. On traveling
“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
16. On living in Paris
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
17. On living before writing
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
18. On the wisdom of old men
“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
19. On managing life’s stresses
“But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.”
20. On remaining strong through life’s challenges
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”
21. On finishing a novel
“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
22. On worrying
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”
23. On old men waking early
“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
24. On embracing new ideas
“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.”
25. On being broken
“We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.”
26. On writing about characters in a novel
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people. People not characters. A character is a caricature.”
27. On the writing process
“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it like drilling rock and then blasting it out with chargers. “
28. On mastering your craft
“The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.”
29. On not needing explanations for everything
“There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”
30. On the power of observance
“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”
31. On living more seriously
“The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.”
