“The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish.”

Rejecting predetermined symbolism while leaving readers free to find meanings beyond the literal story · Letter to Bernard Berenson, 13 September 1952

• Criticism
• Symbolism
• Writing

“I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross.”

Drawing a boundary between irreverent humour and circumstances demanding seriousness · Letter, 21 June 1952

• Belief
• Humour
• Respect

“My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.”

Treating physical health pragmatically as the resource on which continued work depended · Letter, 21 February 1952

• Care
• Health
• Work

“Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.”

Mocking romantic notions of travel while describing one of his working habits · Letter, 9 July 1950

• Humour
• Travel
• Writing

“Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part.”

A deliberately comic reversal of conventional ideas about war and ordinary life · Letter to Marlene Dietrich, 27 June 1950

• Humour
• Life
• War

“Nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.”

Using boxing imagery to express both literary competitiveness and respect for Tolstoy · Conversation, profile by Lillian Ross, 1950

• Humour
• Influence
• Literature

“Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.”

Reducing literary ambition to workmanship, persistence and completion · Letter to Arthur Mizener, 12 May 1950

• Perseverance
• Work
• Writing

“If it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.”

Expressing faith that genuinely accomplished writing can outlive its author · Conversation, recalled by Malcolm Cowley, Life, 1949

• Eternity
• Fame
• Writing

“Easy writing makes hard reading.”

Suggesting that apparent ease in composition often produces weak prose · Conversation, recalled by Samuel Putnam, 1947

• Discipline
• Reading
• Writing

“But never feel as good as while writing.”

A concise declaration of the pleasure he found in the act of writing itself · Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 14 November 1945

• Happiness
• Work
• Writing

“It's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is.”

Explaining the awkwardness writers face when judging or discussing their own work · Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 17 October 1945

• Criticism
• Humility
• Writing

“The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

Presenting prose as a disciplined craft governed by principles rather than ornament · Letter, 23 July 1945

• Discipline
• Skill
• Writing

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see”

Describing direct experience as part of the cost and preparation of serious writing · Preface, The First Forty-Nine Stories, 1944

• Discovery
• Experience
• Writing

“A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer.”

Distinguishing artistic seriousness from ponderousness or self-importance · Non-fiction, Death in the Afternoon

• Humour
• Style
• Writing

“Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.”

Connecting fear with the imagination's capacity to anticipate suffering · Introduction, Men at War, 1942

• Courage
• Fear
• Imagination

“I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.”

Defending deliberate restraint against critics who mistook stylistic choice for inability · Letter, 26 August 1940

• Criticism
• Style
• Writing

“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly.”

Treating truthful testimony as a responsibility when writers witness major historical events · Preface to The Great Crusade, 1940

• History
• Truth
• Writing

“I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough.”

Stripping patriotic rhetoric of its power in the face of physical mortality · Letter, 12 January 1936

• Mortality
• Politics
• War

“I would rather have one honest friend than most of the friends that I have known.”

Placing sincerity above the number or social usefulness of friendships · Letter to Ivan Kashkin, 19 August 1935

• Friendship
• Sincerity
• Trust

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin.”

Warning that political failures can be concealed temporarily through inflation and war · Essay, Notes on the Next War, 1935

• Politics
• Power
• War

“The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings.”

Making honesty about human beings the central difficulty of prose · Essay, Old Newsman Writes: A Letter from Cuba, 1934

• Humanity
• Truth
• Writing

“Make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.”

Expressing his belief that invented fiction can achieve a truth beyond literal fact · Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 28 May 1934

• Imagination
• Truth
• Writing

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

Urging artists to prove their power through concentration rather than sheer scale · Letter, 5–6 January 1932

• Art
• Simplicity
• Writing

“I've been in love (truly) with five women, the Spanish Republic and the 4th Infantry Division.”

Mixing romantic, political and military loyalties in a characteristically extravagant confession · Letter to Marlene Dietrich, 1 July 1930

• Love
• Politics
• War