Quote

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.

Ernest Hemingway

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ernest Hemingway
Age: 61 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 21
Died: 1961
Died: July 2
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Oak Park
Illinois
Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemmingway
E. M. Hemmingway
E. Hemmingway
E. Hemingway
Ernest M. Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Shows
Hole
Stories
Holes
Part
Seven
Doe
Writer
Anything
Story
Omits
Every
Show
Iceberg
Something
Water
Strengthens
Doesn
Eliminate

More quotes by Ernest Hemingway

Image
In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
The only place where you could see life and death, i. e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it. I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
It is very bad for (an artist) to talk about how he (creates). It is not the (artist's) province to explain or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work. It's none of their business that you had to learn. Let them think you were born that way.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
'Safety', the wife of Pablo said. 'There is no such thing as safety. There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great danger. In seeking safety now you lose all.'
Ernest Hemingway
Image
First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick camp-following eunuchs of literature.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
We think. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates war. There is a class that control a country that is stupid and down not realise anything and never can. That is why we have this war. Also they make money out of it.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.
Ernest Hemingway
Image
You'll lose it, if you talk about it
Ernest Hemingway
Image
The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky he thought
Ernest Hemingway