I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time...
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.
No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Man is not made for defeat.
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
I rewrote the ending of ‘Farewell to Arms’ 39 times before I was satisfied.
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.
You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.
The shortest answer is doing the thing.
The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.