Writing had allowed Hemingway to lead a glamorous life. I decided that I was going to be a writer. I had written stories before, but they had all been terrible. I believed I had written only two good lines in my life. These were from a science-fiction story I had attempted: I have seen stars swoon into darkness. I have seen cliffs of stardust a hundred billion miles high. I was so proud of these lines that I would recite them whenever I had the chance. The biography said that Hemingway wrote very simply, so that anything false would be exposed. I thought that Hemingway might have chosen to write this way for moral reasons, but I would do so because I wasn’t capable of doing any better.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter