Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
AuthenticityIntegrityRulesTradition The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
ArtCourageHonorRisk 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.
BreakthroughCreativityIdeaIncubation 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.
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.
CreativityHopePersistence '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.
DenialHardshipInnocenceRealitySelf-awareness 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.
CreativityDisciplineFocusRoutine 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.
ImaginationLiteratureTruthWisdom All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
FoundationInfluenceLiteratureRace RelationsRepresentation All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
DedicationStruggleVulnerabilityWriting There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
CreativityExperiencePerspectiveStruggleWriting 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.
CreationImmortalityInnovationLifeTruth 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.
ArtDepressionDoubtStruggle That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
FulfillmentHappinessIntelligencePursuit Of HappinessSelf-awareness Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ExperienceHonorSurvivalWriting 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.
ArchitectureCharacteristicsGeographyLandscapeTravel 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.
ClarityEnduranceLegacyMastery 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.
ConsequenceCynicismDependenceHuman NatureRealism 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.
Character DevelopmentCreativityRealismWriting When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
LearningListeningWisdom I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
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.
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.