Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.
Ernest HemingwayWhen you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?
Ernest HemingwayIt is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
Ernest HemingwayThat is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
Ernest HemingwayI am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said. "With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night." "I want to go home and into bed." "We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.
Ernest HemingwayThe 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.
Ernest Hemingway