ernest hemingway in his own words

a gallery of essential quotes

Hemingway spent his working life finding the exact right word and removing everything else. The economy, the precision, the refusal to over-explain — it shows in everything he wrote. These are the quotes that have survived the decades. This collection is maintained by the official Ernest Hemingway estate, Hemingway Ltd.

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

    — A Moveable Feast

  • "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."

    — A Farewell to Arms

  • "Courage is grace under pressure."

  • "There is no friend as loyal as a book."

  • “You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

    — The Sun Also Rises

  • "The first draft of anything is shit."

  • "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

    — The Old Man and the Sea

  • "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

  • "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

    — A Moveable Feast

  • "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."

  • "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

  • "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."

  • "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake."

  • "Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact."

  • "To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it."

  • “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”

    — The Sun Also Rises