10 Quotes on Writing by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer and journalist. His understated writing style was a major influence on 20th-century fiction. He was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best known works include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“There's no rule on how it is to write … Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done – so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.”

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Ernest Hemingway

“I have to write to be happy whether I get paid for it or not. But it is a hell of a disease to be born with. I like to do it. Which is even worse. That makes it from a disease into a vice. Then I want to do it better than anybody has ever done it which makes it into an obsession. An obsession is terrible. Hope you haven't gotten any. That's the only one I've got left.”

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Ernest Hemingway

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