In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

In 1954 when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style. The sentences build on each other as events build to create a sense of the whole.

His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. They separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. He publiErnest Hemingwayd seven novels six short story collections and two non-fiction works.