Ernest Hemingway

You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

I think I am actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.

[To Robertson] I think you should move to California. Malibu is paradise. You can always change your mind. Why don’t you just let me put this together? I’ll get you a house in the Malibu Colony.

When I went to our American history books to learn how our forefathers harrowed the land, I discovered that the historians knew nothing about harrows. Yet our country has depended more on harrows than on guns or speeches. I thought that a history which excluded harrows, and all the rest of daily life, was bunk. And I think so yet.

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.

I didn’t start a war. Nobody died.

There’s a lot of people out there who go through hard times, and they feel alone. They feel like nobody is there. But I’m in the same boat.

I realize that advice is worth what it costs – that is, nothing.

The secret of life is to validate your existence.

I don’t believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work.

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

Are you doing what you’re doing today because you want to do it or because it’s what you were doing yesterday?

This is no dress rehearsal.

We change every minute, never the same. If there’s no room to express the changes there can’t be any truthfulness.

When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived; and that, I think is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition.