A Moveable Feast - Hemingway

“He’s just a showman and he corrupts for the pleasure of corruption and he leads people into other vicious practices as well.”

She wanted to know the gay part of how the world was going; never the real, never the bad.

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writings, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

“You are all a generation perdue.”

But the hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty, easy labels.

No one I knew was ever nicer to me.

“Don’t read too fast,” she said.

“And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.”
“No. Never.”

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except when to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending.

We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.

She had the lovely high cheekbones for arrogance.

"There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger."

But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.

Racing never came between us, only people could do that; but for a long time it stayed close to us like a demanding friend.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

"You want me to paint you and pay you and bang you to keep my head clear, and be in love with you too," Pascin said. "You poor littl doll."

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment.

I tried to break his face down and describe it but I could only get the eyes. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.

Ernest Walsh was dark, intense, faultlessly Irish, poetic and clearly marked for death as a character is marked for death in a motion picture.

"Hem, I want you to keep this jar of opium and give it to Dunning only when he needs it."

"Monsieur Dunning est monte sur le toit et refuse categoriquement de descendre."

"We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem," he once said to me. "The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance."

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At once time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

I said I did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent.

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try and make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.

Scott then asked me if I were afraid to die and I said more at some times than at others.

I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.

We were happy the way children are who have been separated and are together again and I told her about the trip.

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."

"We're awfully lucky."
"We'll have to be good and hold it."

Zelda had hawk's eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent.

Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.

My words would become something that would have to be destroyed and sometimes, if possible, me with them.

When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away.

All things truly wicked start from an innocence. So you live day by day and enjoy what you have and do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to day as in a war.

I did my business in New York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from Gare de l'Est that would take me down to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second or the third.

I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.