His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

In 1954 when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style. The sentences build on each other as events build to create a sense of the whole.

His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. They separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. He publiErnest Hemingwayd seven novels six short story collections and two non-fiction works.