Writing Quotes by Ernest Hemingway

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.”

— Ernest Hemingway

The writer's job is to tell the truth,

— Ernest Hemingway

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

— Ernest Hemingway

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“I always shot scorpions with the .22 pistol.”

— Ernest Hemingway

The further you go in writing the more alone you are.

— Ernest Hemingway

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

— Ernest Hemingway

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

— Ernest Hemingway

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write…

— Ernest Hemingway

There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.

— Ernest Hemingway

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

— Ernest Hemingway

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

— Ernest Hemingway

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

— Ernest Hemingway

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

— Ernest Hemingway

Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

— Ernest Hemingway

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after the first light as possible.…

— Ernest Hemingway

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There…

— Ernest Hemingway

i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then…

— Ernest Hemingway

“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was…

— Ernest Hemingway

You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.''What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do…

— Ernest Hemingway

On the 'Star,' you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will…

— Ernest Hemingway

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it. Financial security then is a great help…

— Ernest Hemingway

Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work…

— Ernest Hemingway

“Allow me to pay this small tribute to you who taught so much to those of us who wanted to be writers…

— Ernest Hemingway

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the…

— Ernest Hemingway

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what…

— Ernest Hemingway

All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip…

— Ernest Hemingway

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading…

— Ernest Hemingway

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be…

— Ernest Hemingway

“If a man liked his friends' painting or writing, I thought it was probably like those people who like their families, and…

— Ernest Hemingway

“In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is…

— Ernest Hemingway

“Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan. I did not know it…

— Ernest Hemingway

When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it…

— Ernest Hemingway

“To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was…

— Ernest Hemingway

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can…

— Ernest Hemingway

Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making…

— Ernest Hemingway

“I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than…

— Ernest Hemingway

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There…

— Ernest Hemingway

“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again,…

— Ernest Hemingway