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Ernest Hemingway

" When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer‚Äôs assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. 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‚Äôs life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; 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

Writing

related quotes

" If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work. "

Ernest Hemingway

Success

" 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

Learning , Life

" There is no friend as loyal as a book. "

Ernest Hemingway

Books , Friends

" The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. "

Ernest Hemingway

Books , Literature

" I‚Äôm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across‚Äînot to just depict life‚Äîor criticize it‚Äîbut to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can‚Äôt do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can‚Äôt believe in it. Things aren‚Äôt that way. "

Ernest Hemingway

Beauty , Alive , Bad

" It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I am not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't. "

Ernest Hemingway

Fear , Rain

" Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it. "

Ernest Hemingway

Motivation

" I don't want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend. "

Ernest Hemingway

Friendship

" 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. "

Ernest Hemingway

People , Paris

" Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. "

Ernest Hemingway

War

" They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. "

Ernest Hemingway

War , Patriotism

" You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself. "

Ernest Hemingway

Killing , War

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