Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.
Ernest Hemingway, (letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald)(via bookwormlily)
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest Hemingway, Death In The Afternoon
“We could have had such a damned good time together.”
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.
Ernest Hemingway (via escassez)
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.
Ernest Hemingway
“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and The Sea
“All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and The Sea
The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
Ernest Hemingway
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”-Ernest Hemingway
“Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.”-Albert Camus
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
