Hemingway

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You can never return to the place you once left.

“Ernest strolled in the rain down the long, winding main street, looking at the shirts and postcards and cheap china dishes in the shop windows. On a stool behind the bar in the principal wine shop sat a girl who was knitting a sweater.

‘The town is changed.’ said Ernest.
The girl nodded without missing a stitch.
‘I was here during the war.’ He said.
‘So were many others.’ said the girl.

Ernest drank his drink and left the place. He knew enough now not to try to find the garden with the plane tree and the wisteria vine. Perhaps it never existed.
Back at the Two Swords, the dinner was poor and he could not see to read by the light of the single bulb.
Early next morning, after a sleepless night, he and Hadley left in a hired car for Rovereto. It was still raining.”

– Ernest Hemingway,
Biography by
Carlos Baker.

“We can’t ever go back to old things or try and get the “old kick” out of something or find things the way we remembered them. We have them as we remember them and they are fine and wonderful and we have to go on and have other things because the old things are nowhere except in our minds now”.
– Hemingway.

photo :
An injured Hemingway during the First World War, 1918, Milan, Italy.

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