Ernest Hemingway Quotes

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.

To write well it is first necessary to have something to say.

In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.

I think something that's very important for us to communicate is usually very simple. Like breathing: Breathing is very simple. You don't do a dissonant 9th harmony or something in breathing. You just breathe, you know. I think that's how it is with very important messages.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

People who think well, write well

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.

Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts.

You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

Time Management Tips: One can make a radar-like sweep of the horizon to identify time and task challenges while these are still manageable and while we still have a choice. The organizational adage, "the more parts, the more trouble," also applies to words. Multiplying words may actually multiply the probability of being misunderstood; economies in expression (without being taciturn or aloof) not only save time, but usually are more honest and more clear.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?