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.


Letter to Bernard Berenson (24 September 1954); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Ernest Hemingway Quotes

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 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 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 know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference....