17 Quotes From Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’ That Will Move You.
Back in the 20th century, Ernest Hemingway wasn’t the writer we know him as. He was a struggling expat writer in Paris living with his first wife Hadley Richardson and their child Jack (Bumby). A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir by him where he reflects upon those days and his interactions with some legendary artists and writers.
This particular book is worth a read because of his writing about his wife who he was in love with (little did we know there would be 3 more wives in the future back then) and his thoughts about writing.
The memoir was published in 1964, 3 years after his death. The title ‘A Moveable Feast’ was suggested by Hemingway’s friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner, who remembered Hemingway using the term in 1950.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” — Ernest Hemingway.
Without further ado, let’s delve into one of the greatest works of art!
These are 17 quotes I scribbled in my diary while reading, I’d recommend you to read the whole memoir.
1. Writing –
“The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.”
2. Feeling Hollow After Finishing A Story -
“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love”
3. Wise words, On Combating Writer’s Block -
“I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”
4. Not Being Able To Share Your Work –
“Miss Stein sat on the bed that was on the floor and asked to see the stories I had written and she said that she liked them except one called “Up in Michigan.”
“It’s good,” she said. “That’s not the question at all. But it is inaccrochable. That means it is like a picture that a painter paints and then he cannot hang it when he has a show and nobody will buy it because they cannot hang it either.”
5. When Your Work Is Therapeutic –
“Work could cure almost anything, I believed then, and I believe now.”
6. On Making Love & Loyalty –
“We’ll come home and eat here and we’ll have a lovely meal and drink Beaune from the co-operative you can see right out of the window there with the price of the Beaune on the window. And afterward, we’ll read and then go to bed and make love.”
“And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.”
“No. Never.”
7. On Dealing With Poverty –
“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”
8. Poverty Hits Hard -
“By any standards, we were still very poor and I still made such small economies as saying that I had been asked out for lunch and then spending two hours walking in the Luxembourg gardens and coming back to describe the marvelous lunch to my wife.”
9. Good Sense Of Humour Helps!
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”
10. Being Biased –
“He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment.”
11. Friendship Break Ups Hurt –
“But I could never make friends again truly, neither in my heart nor in my
head. When you cannot make friends anymore in your head is the worst. But it was more complicated than that.”
12. From One Ernest To Another — Call Out My Name.
“It’s strange we have the same name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Ernest,” I said. “It’s a name we must both live up to. You see what I mean, don’t you, Ernest?”
13. Scott Fitzgerald On Being Away From His Wife –
“This is the first night I have ever slept away from her since we were married and I have to talk to her. You can see what it means to us both, can’t you?”
14. Important Travel Tip — Pls note.
“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
15. Hemingway To Fitzgerald On Writing –
“Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.”
16. Seeing His Wife After A Long Time –
“When I saw my wife again standing by the tracks as the train came in by the piled logs at the station, I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”
17. The Magic Of Paris –
“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.”
How did these make you feel? If you’re still in 2 minds about reading the book, I suggest you do some reading on those Années Folles in Paris post World War 1, and about the ‘Lost Generation’ like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and company. Let me know if that changes your mind. 😊
