There can be no great literature in America until her writers have learned to trust her implicitly and love her devoutly.

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and 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.

The writer's job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.

What is moral is what you feel good after.

He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway.