Ernest Hemingway

He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.

But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was a bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.

I obscenity in the milk of my shame.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't.' She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

Besides, I'm not jealous. I'm just so in love with you that there isn't anything else.

No. Have it here where it is quiet." "You and your quiet", said Brett. "What is it men feel about quiet?" "We like it," said the count. Like you like your noise, my dear.

He smelled the odor of the pine boughs under him, the piney smell of the crushed needles and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. ... This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark? That was the odor of cactus flowers, mimosa and the sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Or a Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Or a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven?

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.

Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

What you don't write is often more important than what you do

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

Don't you believe I love you? Don't know how I can make you believe. I didn't want to kiss you goodbye--that was the trouble--I wanted to kiss you goodnight. [_] Of course I love you. I love you all the time. [_] I'd like to hold you and kiss you so that you wouldn't doubt whether I wanted to or not.