25 Ernest Hemingway Quotes to Inspire Writers

By Rainne Mendoza | Published August 10, 2022

For writers who stimulate the world’s imagination with their powerful gift of storytelling, being a writer is not just a profession, hobby or art, it’s also a journey.

And what better way to learn the pains and joys of being a writer on a rollercoaster ride than reading these Ernest Hemingway quotes from the legendary storyteller himself.

Who was Ernest Hemingway?

Ernest Hemingway was a novelist and journalist who won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature back in 1954 after rousing readers all over the world with his classics including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.

As the celebrated Nobel awardee succinctly put it, a writer’s life is a combination of hardship and fulfillment, joy and sorrow, being a good listener and an individual who can invoke different emotions by writing mere words on paper.

If you’re a writer, these 50 quotes from Ernest Hemingway will help you get through the ups and downs of writing your poetry, novel or manuscript.

We also have a collection of inspirational Dale Carnegie quotes and that will inspire you to rediscover the pleasure of reading.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration.

Our inspirational quote category page has even more inspirational and educational quotes.

Ernest Hemingway Quotes to Inspire Writers

1. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway

2. “All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.” – Ernest Hemingway

3. “From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?” – Ernest Hemingway

4. “I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.” – Ernest Hemingway

5. “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.” – Ernest Hemingway

6. “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.” – Ernest Hemingway

7. “They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.” – Ernest Hemingway

8. Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” – Ernest Hemingway

9. “You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.” – Ernest Hemingway

10. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” – Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway quotes to inspire your writing journey?

11. “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” – Ernest Hemingway

12. “But man is not made for defeat.” – Ernest Hemingway

13. “Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway

14. “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.” – Ernest Hemingway

15. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway

16. “My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.” – Ernest Hemingway

17. “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” – Ernest Hemingway

18. “A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.” – Ernest Hemingway

19. “A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.” – Ernest Hemingway

20. “After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.” – Ernest Hemingway

You will also enjoy our article on The Sun Also Rises quotes.

Ernest Hemingway to help you get through the ups and downs of writing

21. “All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” – Ernest Hemingway

22. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” – Ernest Hemingway

23. “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” – Ernest Hemingway

24. “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.” – Ernest Hemingway

25. “I drink to make other people more interesting.” – Ernest Hemingway

How can Ernest Hemingway inspire your writing journey?

Writing is not easy and it’s a lot of work but it’s also a meaningful way to create inspiration, to invoke feelings for a powerful call to action, to provide information, to educate, and to entertain by making readers laugh at life even for just a moment.

For those of you who just began their journey as a writer, there will be bumps along the way.

Sometimes, the feeling of giving up and throwing away your dreams to create will be difficult to resist.

But as these insightful Ernest Hemingway quotes have shown us, although writing can make a writer bleed, there will be joy at the end of the tunnel especially after your beloved manuscript has finally been completed despite your struggles.