Ernest Hemingway Quotes and Life

Ernest Hemingway was a famous American writer, novelist, journalist and essayist. He is best known for his novels which have gone on to become classics of American literature. Famous Ernest Hemingway books include “In Our Time”, “The Sun Also Rises”, “A Farewell to Arms”, “To Have and Have Not”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Mini biography: Born Ernest Miller Hemingway on the 21st of July, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, United States of America. His mother Grace Ernestine Hall was an opera singer and music teacher and his father Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a physician. He married his first wife Hadley Richardson in 1921 and they divorced in 1927. His second wife Pauline Pfeiffer in 1927 and they divorced in 1940. Third wife Martha Gellhorn was married in 1940 and they divorced in 1945. Hemingway’s fourth wife and widow was the journalist Mary Welsh, married in 1946. He had three children: Jack Hemingway with his first wife, Patrick Hemingway and Gregory Hancock Hemingway with his second wife. The novelist died on the 2nd of July, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho, U.S. at the age of 61.

List of Famous Ernest Hemingway Quotes

Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones. Ernest Hemingway

However you make your living is where your talent lies. Ernest Hemingway

Easy writing makes hard reading. Ernest Hemingway

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. Ernest Hemingway

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. Ernest Hemingway

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it. Ernest Hemingway

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward. Ernest Hemingway

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred. Ernest Hemingway

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other. Ernest Hemingway

There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is Fascism. For Fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live or work under Fascism. Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder. Ernest Hemingway

I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Ernest Hemingway

Writing Quotes About Ernest Hemingway

I hope I still have what Hemingway called the ‘shit detector’, that I’m still severe enough with myself if something is not finished to destroy it and start again. Frank Auerbach Quotes

Ernest Hemingway Book Cover

More on Famous American Novelist Ernest Hemingway

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Related or similar popular novelists include: Charles Baudelaire, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and other Famous American Writers.