"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things only because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesMemoirists from the United StatesCatholics from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Hemingway's famous iceberg theory of writing.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ernest Hemingway
1899 β 1961
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
289 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ernest Hemingway β
Related Quotes
"All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."
"A bottle of wine was good company."
"That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best β make it all up β but make it up so truly that later it wβ¦"
"Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that wβ¦"
"Every day above earth is a good day."
"And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to hβ¦"
"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hoβ¦"
"Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letβ¦"
"Fuck literature."
"A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book."