Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway on Writing
9 quotes
"I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently."
"Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged."
"It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945"
"I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do."
"In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause 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."
"Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood."
"The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function."
"Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols."
"…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."