“If they believe the critics when they say they are great then they must believe them when they say they are rotten and they lose confidence. At present we have two good writers who cannot write because they have lost confidence through reading critics. If they wrote, sometimes it would be good and sometimes it would be quite bad, but the good would get out. But they have read the critics and they must write masterpieces. The masterpieces the critics said they wrote. They are not masterpieces of course. They were just quite good books. So now they cannot write at all.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition
Tagged: Life
Appears In: Quotes About Life
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Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition

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