“I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.”

Explains the sense of duty behind his decision to enlist · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Duty
• Politics
• War

“My best is not yet written. I mean to do something really great if I am spared, but out here one may at any moment be hurled beyond Life.”

Literary ambition is inseparable from awareness of imminent death · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Hope
• Mortality
• Writing

“I get more pleasure from a good line than from a big cheque.”

Places artistic satisfaction above financial reward · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Art
• Simplicity
• Writing

“I do my best work in Spring. I have had many disappointments in life and many sorrows, but in my saddest moment song came to me and I sang.”

Presents writing as a source of consolation amid sorrow · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Consolation
• Sorrow
• Writing

“Of myself I am a fast writer and very prolific. I have long silences, often for weeks, then the mood comes over me and I must write and write, no matter where I be or what the circumstances are.”

Describes creativity as alternating between silence and irresistible activity · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Creativity
• Silence
• Writing

“I could not bear brick horizons, and all my dreams were calling me home.”

Expresses his enduring attachment to rural Meath · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Home
• Longing
• Nature

“I had no more to learn in National School at fourteen, so I strapped up my books and laid them away with the cobwebs and the dust.”

Recalls the abrupt end of his formal schooling · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Books
• Education
• Youth

“Meanwhile the years were coming over me with their wisdom, and I began to realise that men cannot live by dreams.”

A rueful recognition of the claims of practical life · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Dreams
• Experience
• Wisdom

“I hated gardens where gaudy flowers were trained in rows but loved the wild things of change and circumstance.”

Prefers spontaneous natural beauty to imposed order · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Freedom
• Individuality
• Nature

“I loved all wandering people and things and several times tried to become part of a gypsy caravan.”

Reveals an early attraction to wandering lives and freedom · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Childhood
• Freedom
• Travel

“I saw curious shapes in shadows and clouds and loved to watch the change of the leaves and flowers. I heard voices in the rain and the wind and strange whisperings in the waters.”

Shows how intensely imagination and the natural world were intertwined for him · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Imagination
• Nature
• Wonder

“I avoided the evening play of neighbouring children to find some secret place in a wood by the Boyne and there imagine fairy dances and hunts, fires and feasts.”

Recalling the solitary imaginative world of his childhood · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Childhood
• Imagination
• Nature

“I have always been very quiet and bashful and a great mystery in my own place.”

A candid description of the reserve that marked him from childhood · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Character
• Identity
• Silence

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!”

A comic rule about accountability and the consequences of extravagant promises · Personal rule sent to Charles Scribner IV

• Character
• Discipline
• Humour

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

Wryly contrasting the mythology of natural talent with the reality of learning a craft · Conversation with Arnold Samuelson, recalled in With Hemingway

• Humour
• Learning
• Writing

“When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go.”

Describing his habit of allowing an idea to develop slowly rather than forcing it immediately · Conversation, as quoted in Charmed Circle

• Creativity
• Imagination
• Patience

“If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.”

Expressing deep suspicion of popularity as a reliable measure of artistic achievement · Conversation, recalled by Morley Callaghan

• Art
• Criticism
• Fame

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

Presenting writing as a lifelong process of learning rather than a skill finally mastered · New York Journal-American, 11 July 1961

• Humility
• Learning
• Writing

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best.”

Valuing slow physical travel as a way of gaining an intimate memory of landscape · Article, collected in By-Line, Ernest Hemingway

• Experience
• Nature
• Travel

“I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon.”

Acknowledging another writer's achievement in an area he felt unable to improve upon · Letter, 3 July 1956

• Humility
• Influence
• Writing

“I would have been happy — happier — today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.”

Responding to his Nobel Prize by publicly praising another writer he admired · Statement, The New York Times Book Review, 7 November 1954

• Humility
• Literature
• Respect

“You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing.”

Presenting prose fiction as a demanding craft requiring sustained invention · Letter to Bernard Berenson, 24 September 1954

• Skill
• Work
• Writing

“Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end.”

An exaggerated but revealing statement of his belief in a writer's mastery of language · Letter, 20 March 1953

• Knowledge
• Language
• Writing

“Having books published is very destructive to writing.”

Contrasting the demands and distractions of publication with the private work of creation · Letter to Bernard Berenson, 2 October 1952

• Creativity
• Fame
• Writing