Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation.
First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.
If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.
Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.
Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates.
I had an inheritance from my father, It was the moon and the sun. And though I roam all over the world, The spending of it’s never done.
God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.
That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
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.
The bicycle riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves.
This beer is good for you. This is draft beer. Stick with the beer. Let's go and beat this guy up and come back and drink some more beer.
Summer is a discouraging time to work - you don't feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.
He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled.
Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.
I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.
It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.
You cannot stop trusting people in life but I have learned to be a little bit careful. The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them.
If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.
When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.
Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. I rewrote the first part of Farewell to Arms at least fifty times.
Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.
Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.
Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.
But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope).
But don't try to find an untroublesome woman. She will dull out on you. What makes a woman good in bed makes it impossible for her to live alone.
If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything?
There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.
Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.
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.
There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing.
You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
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.
He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone
Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your nerves.
Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.
Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves.
He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
Night is always darker before the dawn and life is the same, the hard times will pass, every thing will get better and sun will shine brighter then ever.
I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.
In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.
The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.
You have it now and that is all your whole life is; now. There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow.
Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.
You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across, not just to depict life, or criticize it, but to actually make it alive.
He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later.