You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did notcompletely trust anyone.

Creation’s probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

He had never quarreled much with this woman, while with the women that he loved he had quarreled so much they had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarreling, killed what they had together....

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

To show his nervousness was not shameful; only to admit it.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it...

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to...

But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés, and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a...

In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does...

What a writer has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

If I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I could walk through the gardens and then go to the Musée du Luxembourg where the great paintings were that...

Then I started to think in Lipp’s about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d’Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley...

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

The fish is my friend too…I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if...

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

Blood is thicker than water,”The young man saidAs he knifed his friendFor a drooling old bitchAnd a house full of lies.

My heart’s broken,’ he thought. ‘If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.

The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know...

I write description in longhand because that’s hardest for me and you’re closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome...

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s...

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

I drink to make other people more interesting.

Don’t you believe I love you? Don’t know how I can make you believe. I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye–that was the trouble–I wanted to kiss you goodnight. […] Of course I love you....

Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

I’m 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 will die like a dog for no good reason.

I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist,...

My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she and the friend who lived with her had been very cordial and friendly and we had loved the big studio with the great paintings....

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

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and...

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly...

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

We were no longer, technically, children although in many ways I am quite sure that we were. Childish has become a term of contempt. “Don’t be childish, darling.” “I hope to Christ I am. Don’t...

Love was the greatest thing, wasn’t it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your...

I suppose she only wanted what she couldn’t have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyways. Not to...

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos he thought. But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all...

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I’m deaf with it....

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. 

if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write...