Ernest Hemingway

ME:
Thank you for your time Mr Hemingway – this is a great honour. I am just one of millions of fans who love your writing. The movies were great but really don’t do justice to your books at all in my honest opinion.

HEMINGWAY:
“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

ME:
Hmmm I never thought of it in that context – interesting.
Before I forget I need to ask this for a friend of mine. He asked me to ask you if you think that your style of writing while standing up would help with his writing being that he has broken his right hip twice and walks with a limp.

HEMINGWAY:
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it - don't cheat with it - the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places; the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector!”

ME:

Wow! I think he will feel his question well and truly answered, thank you.
Tell me, what kind of things inspire you to write?

HEMINGWAY:

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way - as a writer, you should not judge, you should understand”

ME:

Well, I know it’s the magic way you have with words that keeps me captivated.

HEMINGWAY:

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time - after writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love; in order to write about life first you must live it!”

ME:

Hmmm….some times people question me about how I learned to write the way I do.

HEMINGWAY:

“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way!”

ME:

Aha! Thank you….that’s great advice, you have great wisdom sir.. (smiles)

HEMINGWAY:

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise, they grow careful - live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual!!”

ME:

I hope you don’t mind I’ve made a few notes - if I don’t I’m worried I might forget and I’d never forgive myself!!.

HEMINGWAY:

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can, but train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. 

ME:

Thank you so much , though you’re life may have ended tragically, you have attained immortality through your wonderful writings – thank you so much for sharing a few minutes with me – this has been almost a religious experience for me, you wouldn’t like to close our conversation with a small prayer would you??.

HEMINGWAY:

“Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

ME:

Amen!

Robert Frost

ME:  

Thank you for giving me your time Robert I appreciate it very much. I’ve loved your poetry from the moment I read it -  me and the rest of the universe of course!.

ROBERT FROST:  
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.

ME:  
Well your poetry seems to have an effortless quality about it that makes me wish I had the gift of creating beauty with so little effort…however..

ROBERT FROST: 
The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.

You're always believing ahead of your evidence.

What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have.

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.

People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?"  

We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets.?

ME: 
*nods*

ROBERT FROST: 
We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

ME: 
I can see the depth of thought that goes into the creation of your work.....it's so based on clear, logic and passion.

ROBERT FROST: 
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. 

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. 

It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a love-sickness.

It is never a thought to begin with.

ME: 
Hmmm....yes, of course, I see. I believe you were also a teacher Robert?

ROBERT FROST: 
I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school, I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you - how many things would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”

ME: 
Do you mean as in my being able to turn it into a poem or something - quite a few, believe me!

ROBERT FROST: 
Everything I've learned about life can be summed up in three words. Life goes on.

ME: 
Well, I love all your works but I have a soft spot for Fire and Ice, not because it deals with the end of all things, but because it deals with love.

ROBERT FROST: 
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. We love the things we love for what they are.

You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hate-able. It takes brains to see the difference

ME: 
Well I’ve got a few of those, brains I mean - but they don’t always listen. 

I think they will now, after listening to you…and to keep the momentum going me and my brain are going to be reading a lot more of Robert Frost I promise!  *smiles*

ROBERT FROST: 
People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons.

 It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.

ME: 
Well they're dickheads then!

ROBERT FROST: 
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

ME: 
Exactly! Dickheads!  what this sad world needs is poetry, poetry as you write it – makes life so beautiful – lot of idiots out there wouldn’t know a poem if it jumped and ..you know, bit them on their bum!..

ROBERT FROST: 
Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

ME: 
And every moment spent listening to you has been totally gold - something I will treasure always, any last further comments of inspiration please Robert?.

ROBERT FROST: 
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

ME:  That was perfect, thank you very much.

Albert Einstein

ME:
Good morning Professor Einstein, I’ve read that you are a very humble man, you treat everyone you meet with respect and deference – and enjoy passing the time of day with people from all walks of life.

EINSTEIN: 
I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university…I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

ME:
 Well yes but it’s the way you respond to questions, especially questions related to your thoughts and theories – you make them so simple to understand……

EINSTEIN:     
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning…The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

ME:
See Professor, that’s what I mean…just in that answer are things to inspire and motivate, I believe, well not just me, the universe I think, that whatever field you chose to devote your life to would not only be the better for it, but mankind as a whole would be truly blessed as a result.

EINSTEIN:     
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music

ME:
Or a man of the cloth, you have amazing views on man and his relationship with God – I think you would have made a brilliant Pope or similar!.

EINSTEIN:     
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

ME:     Ohhh?

EINSTEIN:     
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

ME:     
It’s very obvious you have done some very deep thinking on this, very, very deep indeed!.

EINSTEIN:     
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

ME:     
Would you say that you are a happy person Professor Einstein?

EINSTEIN:     
"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

ME:  
(smiling)     Nothing I guess!.