Ernest Hemingway on Writing

• When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already 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 spring that fed it. [A Moveable Feast, pp. 25-26]
• It was in that room that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to dot it. Going down the stairs when I had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris. [A Moveable Feast, p. 13]
• Let me know how long I have to stay away from it before I can get it to you. Longer I can stay away before I have to get it to you the better it will be as gives me a whole new chance to see it cold and plug any gaps and amplify where there is any need. [to Charles Scribner, 1949, Selected Letters, p. 684]
• P.P.S. Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey? [to Ivan Kashkin, 1935, Selected Letters, p. 420]
• Writers should work alone. They should see each other only after their work is done, and not too often then. Otherwise they become like writers in New York. All angleworms in a bottle, trying to derive knowledge and nourishment from their own contact and from the bottle. Sometimes the bottle is shaped art, sometimes economics, sometimes economic-religion. But once they are in the bottle they stay there. They are lonesome outside of the bottle. They do not want to be lonesome. They are afraid to be alone in their beliefs. [Green Hills of Africa, pp. 21-22]
• All art is only done by the individual. The individual is all you ever have and all schools only serve to classify their members as failures. [Death by the Afternoon, pp. 99-100]
• I do not wish to squawk about being hit financially any more than I would squawk about being hit physically. I need money, badly, but not badly enough to do one dishonorable, shady, borderline, or "fast" thing to get it. I hope this is quite clear. [to Alfred Rice, 1948, Selected Letters, p. 655] 
• I get letters from Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan etc. asking me for stories, articles, and serials, but am publishing nothing for six months or a year ... because I know that now is a very crucial time and that it is much more important for me to write in tranquility, trying to write as well as I can, with no eye on any market, nor any thought of what the stuff will bring, or even if it can ever be published - than to fall into the money making trap which handles American writers like the corn-husking machine handles my noted relative's thumb... [to Grace Hall Hemingway, 1927, Selected Letters, p. 244]
• I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently. [to Wallace Meyer, 1952, Selected Letters, p. 752]