Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start."

"But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there."

"But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. we thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich."

"But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There's nothing you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it."

"But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

"But you always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall for them but don't let them ruin you."

"But you have no house and no courtyard to your no-house, he thought. You have no family but a brother who goes to battle tomorrow and you own nothing but the wind and the sun and an empty belly. The wind is small, he thought, and there is no sun. You have four grenades in your pocket but they are only good to throw away. You have a carbine on your back but it is only good to give away bullets. You have a message to give away. And you're full of crap that you can give to the earth, he grinned in the dark. You can anoint it also with urine. Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man, he told himself and grinned again."

"But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."

"But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready."

"But, thank God, [the fish] are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able."

"But, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. Why isn't there more dialogue? What we want in a book by this citizen is people talking; that is all he knows how to do and now he doesn't do it. The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue. Someone ought to put a stop to him. He is bull crazy."

"By guts I mean, grace under pressure."

"By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better."

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

"Cheer up,' I said. 'All countries look just like the moving pictures."

"Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself."

"Cojones: testicles; a valorous bull fighter is said to be plentifully equipped with these. In a cowardly bullfighter they are said to be absent."

"Courage is grace under pressure."

"Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once."

"Damn my fish,' the boy said and he started to cry again."

"Death is like an old whore in a bar--I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her"

"Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts."

"Did I know him? Did I love him? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world, and I loved him like you love God."

"Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it."

"Do you have bad luck with all games? With everything and with women. He smiled again, showing his bad teeth. Truly? –Truly. And what is there to do? -Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change."

"Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare."

"Do you know that in about thirty-five more years we'll be dead? What the hell, Robert, I said. What the hell. I'm serious. ItÂ’s one thing I don't worry about, I said. You ought to. I've had plenty to worry about one time or other. I'm through worrying. Well, I want to go to South America. Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that. But you've never been to South America. South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don't you start living your life in Paris?"

"Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing."

"DonÂ’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and youÂ’re not taking advantage of it?"

"Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols."

"Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?... The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief."

"Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?"

"Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something."

"Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary."

"During our last year in the mountains new people came deep into our lives and nothing was ever the same again. The winter of the avalanches was like a happy and innocent winter in childhood compared to the next winter, a nightmare winter disguised as the greatest fun of all, and the murderous summer that was to follow. It was that year that the rich showed up."

"During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female."

"Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond."

"Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all."

"Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it."

"Ernest Hemingway said: The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

"Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones."

"Even if he was ever afraid he knew that he could do it anyway."

"Every day above earth is a good day."

"Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready."

"Every true story ends in death."

"Every year, something in you dies when the leaves fall from the trees, and the bare branches of the defenseless, swaying in the wind in the cold winter sunshine. But you know that spring will come, just as you are sure that the frozen river again freed from the ice. But when the cold rain poured incessantly and killed the spring, it seems as if for nothing ruined young lives... At that time I already knew that when something ends in life, whether good or bad, there is a void. But the void left after bad, fills itself. Void after something good can be filled, only to find something better."

"Everybody behaves badly, I said. Give them the proper chance."

"Everybody has strange things that mean things to them. You couldn't help it."

"Everybody is friends when things are bad enough."