Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingwaywas an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 July 1899
CityOak Park, IL
CountryUnited States of America
You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.
If you're looking for messages, try Western Union.
I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
I wanted to try this new drink: That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and try new drinks?
Before you quit, you have to try
Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.
But don't try to find an untroublesome woman. She will dull out on you. What makes a woman good in bed makes it impossible for her to live alone.
I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.
You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.
I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.