"Life Stories: profiles from the New Yorker"

[fiefoe]

How Do You Like It Now, Gentleman? (Ernest Hemingway) / Lillian Ross (1950)

    Hemingway was already Papa by then, and Marlene Dietrich already a grandmother twice over. He had a cat that wanted to take pills because it wanted to be human.

__ "After you finish a book, you know, you're dead, but no one knows you're dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing."
__ "(Writers of war who have never been to the battlefield) ... are just like an outfielder who will drop a fly on you when you have pitched to have the batter hit a high fly to that outfielder". <I so need translation for this one.>
__ "Tolstoy... who knew his stuff, who was a hell of a man anywhere you put him - bed, bar, in an empty room where he had to think. I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better."
__ "As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary."
__ "Who the hell should care about saving his soul when it is a man's duty to lose it intelligently, the way you would sell a position you were defending, if you could not hold it, as expensively as possible, trying to make it the most expensive position that was ever sold. It isn't hard to die."
__ "Goddam, I hate to go out in the rain," Hemingway said. "Goddam, I hate to get wet."