Lives are only one with living. How dare we, in our egos, claim catastrophe in the rise and fall of the individual entity? There is only Life, and we are beads strung on its strong and endless thread.

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.

Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.

It is not death that kills us, but life. We are done to death by life.

Two elements enter into successful and happy gatherings at table. The food, whether simple or elaborate, must be carefully prepared; willingly prepared; imaginatively prepared. And the guests - friends, family or strangers - must be conscious of their welcome.

the inferred is always more effective than the obvious.

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it!