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.

  • “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”

    — For Whom the Bell Tolls

  • "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."

    Interview: Dorothy Parker
    Publication: New York World-Telegram, 1939

  • "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."

    From Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961

  • "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."

    — The Sun Also Rises

  • "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

  • “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”

    — Death in the Afternoon

  • "Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it."

    From Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961

  • “Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.”

    Interview: George Plimpton
    Publication: The Paris Review, Issue 18 (1958)

  • “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.”

    Interview: George Plimpton
    Publication: The Paris Review, Issue 18 (1958)

  • “Never confuse movement with action.”

    — Across the River and Into the Trees

  • “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.”

    — Death in the Afternoon

  • “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

    — For Whom the Bell Tolls

  • “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”

    — For Whom the Bell Tolls