The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention. There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. The great thing is to last and get your work done, and see and hear and understand and write when there is something that you know and not before and not too damn much afterwards. There's no one thing that is true. They're all true. To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors. | 
