Quotes from Ernest Hemingway

Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.

But in the Gulf you got time. And I'm figuring all the time. I've got to think right all the time. I can't make a mistake. Not a mistake. Not once. Well, I got something to think about now all right. Something to do and something to think about besides wondering what the hell's going to happen. Besides wondering what's going to happen to the whole damn thing.

The biggest boy was long and dark with Thomas Hudson's neck and shoulders and the long swimmer's legs and big feet. He had a rather Indian face and was a happy boy although in repose his face looked almost tragic.

We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought. However you make your living is where your talent lies.

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?

That's the way our friends the anarchists talk. Whenever things get really bad they want to set fire to something and to die.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings.

his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

What simplicity," the scarred-faced brother, who was called Andrés, said. "And how do you explode them?

I wish I had a stone for the knife," the old man said after he had checked the lashing on the oar butt. "I should have brought a stone." You should have brought many things, he thought. But you did not bring them, old man. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Why did you do it? — I don't know. Here isn't always an explanation for everything. — Oh isn't there? I was brought up to think there was. — That's awfully nice. — Do We have to go on and talk this way? — No. — That's a relief. Isn't it?

But we liked Miss Stein and her friend, although the friend was frightening, and the paintings and the cakes and the eau-devie were truly wonderful. They seemed to like us too and treated us as though we were very good, well-mannered and promising children and I felt that they forgave us for being in love and being married—time would fix that—and when my wife invited them to tea, they accepted.