Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
16 quotes
"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."
"I had never known any man to die while speaking in terza-rima"
"I belong to this notebook and this pencil."
"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."
"You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know"
"I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood."
"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."
"In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did notcompletely trust anyone."
"In those days, there was no money to buy books."
"Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh."
"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day."
"The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on."
"You can either buy clothes or buy pictures," she said. "It's that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Pay no attention to your clothes and no attention at all to the mode, and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the clothes money to buy pictures."
"Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright."
"For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit’s foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there."
"For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle."