A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway

I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was...

He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget.

"I don't know," I said. "There isn't always an explanation for everything."
"Oh, isn't there? I was brought up to think there was."
"That's awfully nice."


"Have you ever loved any one?"
"No," I said.

I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like moves in a chess game.

"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying.
"You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."

She looked at me, "And you do love me?"
"Yes," I lied. "I love you." I had not said it before.

"You won't go away?"
"No. I'll always come back."

The major said he had heard a report that I could drink. I denied this.

"There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war."

Then there was a flash, as when a blast furnace door is swung open, and a road that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind.

The doctors were working with their sleeves up to their shoulders and were red as butchers.

"Come, come," he said. Don't be a bloody hero." Then in Italian: "Lift him very carefully about the legs. His legs are very painful. He is the legitimate son of President Wilson."

"You are really an Italian. All fire and smoke and nothing inside."

"My God what would a man do with a woman like that except worship her?"

"You understand but you do not love God."
"No."
"You do not love Him at all?" he asked.
"I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes."
"You should love Him."
"I don't love much."

"Hello, darling," she said. She looked fresh and young and very beautiful. I thought I had never seen anyone so beautiful.

God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had...

It was as though we met again after each of us had been away on a long journey.

I loved to take her hair down and she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down to kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind falls.

She had wonderfully beautiful hair and I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door and it shone even in the night as water shines sometimes just before it is really daylight.

"Don't talk as though you had to make an honest woman of me, darling. I'm a very honest woman. You can't be ashamed of something if you're only happy and proud of it. Aren't you happy?"

"I've always been afraid of the rain."

There was a great contrast between his world of pessimism and personal cheeriness.

"Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us."


"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?"
"Of course. Who said it?"
"I don't know."
"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them."

"I am very tired of this war. If I was away I do not believe I would come back."

"I will get you drunk and take out your liver and put you in a good Italian liver and make you a man again."

"No. We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. You never get anything new. We all start complete."

"I don't give a damn," Rinaldi said to the table. "To hell with the whole business." He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat, his face pale.
"All right," I said. "To hell with the whole damn business."

"No one ever stopped when they were winning."

"We won't talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain."

Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.

I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little...

"I don't live at all when I'm not with you."
"I won't ever go away," I said. "I'm no good when you're not there. I haven't any life at all any more."

"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "that's what I want too."

"In the spring when it is nice you could come and enjoy it. We could put the little one and the nurse in the big room that is closed now and you and Madame could have your same room looking out over the lake."

"I'm not brave any more, darling. I'm all broken. They've broken me. I know it now."
"Everybody is that way."
"But it's awful. They just keep it up till they break you."

But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

"Don't worry, darling," Catherine said. "I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick."