Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
No writer who knows the great writers
who did not receive the prize
can accept it other than with humility.
There is no need to list these writers.
Everyone here may make his own list
according to his knowledge and his conscience.
It would be impossible for me
to ask the Ambassador of my country
to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things
which are in his heart.
Things may not be immediately discernible
in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate;
but eventually they are quite clear,
and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses,
he will endure or be forgotten.
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 a true writer each book should be a new beginning
where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.
He should always try for something that has never been done
or that others have tried and failed.
Then sometimes, with good luck, he will succeed.
How simple the writing of literature would be
if it were only necessary to write in another way
what has been well written.
It is because we have had such great writers in the past
that a writer is driven far out past where he can go,
out to where no one can help him.
I have spoken too long for a writer.
A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
Again I thank you.