He's a great writer. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party. But you can't kill the guy. He's not human.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the intense rivalry and respect between writers, where admiration can sometimes lead to extreme reactions.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway reflects on the competitive nature of writing, illustrating how the admiration for another writer's talent can provoke strong feelings, even to the extent of wishing harm upon them. The hyperbolic statement reveals Hemingway's acknowledgment of the other writer's exceptional skill, showing that true talent can evoke both envy and acknowledgment, thus suggesting that competition in art can drive individuals to extreme thoughts and actions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges and rivalries in the literary world.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.
Throughout my career, when I have been rejected, there was sometimes subtext, and it was this: People will not read your work because these are not universal stories.
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