The madness all over
Take a good rest, small bird, he said. Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.
It was necessary that I leave Schruns and go to New York to rearrange publishers. I did my business inNew York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from the Gare de 1'Est...
In those days, there was no money to buy books.
I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that the...
I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into.
I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away....
I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so th...
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 bea...
He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run.
He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a w...
Good-bye, you chaps, Mike said. It was a damned fine fiesta.So long, Mike, Bill said.I’ll see you around, I said.Don’t worry about money, Mike said. You can pay for the car, Jake, and I’ll send you my...
Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.
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 t...
But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to t...
Time is the least thing we have of.
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.
The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.