In my travels I have been to the Hemingway House in Key West and the Hemingway Memorial in Sun City, Idaho, and as well as even walking the streets of Paris where Ernest walked and lived and wrote.
I am now on a Hemingway kick, peppering his writings in between my other reads of fiction and non-fiction alike. As always, food for the songwriting soul.
On Writing:
"When I was growing up, my parents always told me that my grandfather said write about what you know."
I have spent over a week walking up to 15 miles a day on the streets of Paris in late Spring, hence this passage of text was interesting enough for me to highlight it and many others like it, on my kindle. Guess you had to be there. ;)
** "I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dôme, its tables running out to the edge of the pavement. Some one waved at me from a table, I did not see who it was and went on. I wanted to get home. The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney’s statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base. I stopped and read the inscription: from the Bonapartist Groups, some date; I forget. He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green new horse-chestnut leaves. My flat was just across the street, a little way down the Boulevard St. Michel."
** "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."
** "Brett looked at me. “I was a fool to go away,” she said. “One’s an ass to leave Paris.”
** "I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company."
** "Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France."
And finally...
** "I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France."
I had to leave....Adieu dès maintenant!