We writers are always looking for inspiration and ways to make the writing come easier. Maybe we should just accept that even brilliant writers like Ernest Hemingway struggled.

Here are five quotes from the book Ernest Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry Phillips.

• “There’s no rule on how it is to write … Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”
• “After a book, I am emotionally exhausted. If you are not, you have not transferred the emotion completely to the reader. Anyway, that is the way it works for me.”
• “Have been work(ing) very hard on this book. She pretty near over. All that remains now is to perform the unperformable miracle you have to always do at the end.”

This next one is from Hemingway’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954.

• “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity or the lack of it, each day.”

For when you are struggling for the right word:

• “Actually if a writer needs a dictionary, he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs. There are only certain words which are valid and similies (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).”

Do you have a favorite quote on writing?