"All bad writers are in love with the epic."
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Ernest Hemingway quotes (page 16 of 40)
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"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."
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"There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing."
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"I learned 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."
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"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."
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"So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear."
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"Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet."
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"Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs but maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places."
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"The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together."
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"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."
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"I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg."
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"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
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"In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason."
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"No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sun-burned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will set sail to another yacht basin and write another saga."
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"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."
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"God knows I didn't mean to fall in love with her"
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"That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way."
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"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred."
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"A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death."
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"It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her."
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