Author Quotes
Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
— A Farewell to Arms (1929)
From Chapter 34. The full passage is darker than the commonly quoted fragment — it continues: "But those that will not break it kills." Hemingway's stoicism with its teeth bared.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
— Attributed (1954)
Widely attributed to Hemingway though the exact source is disputed. It captures his conviction that honest writing requires genuine emotional exposure, not mere technique.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
— A Moveable Feast (1964)
Hemingway's method for overcoming writer's block, described in his posthumous memoir of 1920s Paris. Strip away ornament; start from what you actually know to be true.
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
— Attributed
Frequently attributed to Hemingway. The circular logic is the point — trust is not a conclusion drawn from evidence but a leap taken before the evidence is in.
“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
— Attributed (various interviews)
Hemingway's death-awareness runs through all his fiction. The universality of death makes the particularities of living the only thing that matters.