Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
RealismCynicismHuman NatureDependenceConsequence Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.
DisciplineCreativityRoutineFocus When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.
WritingCreativityExperienceStrugglePerspective The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.
SurvivalHonorWritingExperience Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several important things very quickly. Whether they will be of use to him is conditioned by survival. Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.
TruthImaginationLiteratureWisdom All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
CreationInnovationTruthLifeImmortality From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.
Self-Expression I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
IntelligenceHappinessPursuit Of HappinessSelf-awarenessFulfillment Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
DepressionDoubtArtStruggle That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
CreativityExpressionWriting I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.
ListeningLearningWisdom I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
WritingStruggleVulnerabilityDedication There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
WritingCreativityRealismCharacter Development When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
LegacyClarityMasteryEndurance Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.
AnimalsHumorRespectObservation I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.
LiteratureInfluenceFoundationRepresentationRace Relations All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
GeographyArchitectureTravelLandscapeCharacteristics Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.
PersistenceCreativityHope 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.
TraditionRulesAuthenticityIntegrity The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
IdeaCreativityIncubationBreakthrough When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
CourageHonorArtRisk Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.
Perception When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
InnocenceDenialHardshipSelf-AwarenessReality When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.
CreativityInitiativeInnovationHuman PotentialBelief That 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.
WritingResponsibilityCompletionAftermath After you finish a book, you know, you're dead. But no one knows you're dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.
Morality No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
HabitPassionPleasureDriveCommitment Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.
HappinessPeopleInfluence 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.
DecadenceCriticismMisunderstandingMorality Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
HumorResilienceCreativityPerseverance A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
GovernanceLegitimacyEthicsJusticeIntegrity For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.
CuriosityPerceptionAppreciationPerspective All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
WritingEffortLuckImprovement For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
TruthIntegrityResponsibilityAuthenticity There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Economic PolicyMismanagementInflationWarOpportunism The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
WarDutyFutilityGrief They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
LearningEffortPerceptionDiscretion It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.