(1899–1961)
U.S. novelist and journalist
Ernest Hemingway
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing; but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 2009), restored edition, 58.
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 2009), restored edition, 18.
Poor old Black Dog. I miss him. In the early morning when I work, he’s not there on the kudu skin beside the typewriter; and in the afternoon when I swim, he’s not hunting lizards beside the pool; and in the evenings when I sit in my chair to read, his chin isn’t resting on my foot. I miss Black Dog as much as I miss any friend I ever lost.
Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir, by A. E. Hotchner (New York: Da Capo Press, 2005), 243.
A book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough.
Blurb on front cover of Cyril Connolly’s book The Unquiet Grave (New York: Persea Books, 1981).
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.
Describing F. Scott Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 2009), restored edition, 125.
Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day’s work.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 40.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 61.