Ernest Hemingway on getting the words right

Below is part of an interview with Nobel Prize winning author, Ernest Hemingway from an article titled “The Art of Fiction,” which appeared in the Paris Review in 1956.

Interviewer: “How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of ‘A Farewell to Arms’, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problems there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.”

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