Ernest Hemingway

What to get Braque for his birthday?

I'll send the boy Manolo to the Apple Store. He's a good boy, kind and loyal, he'll know what to do.

Braque will like the iPad, he can draw on it in that wonderful way of his, like he is the stone or the bird or the shadow he is drawing. The iPad will be a good gift for Braque.

We talked the other night of fish. Does a fish have its own life, or does a fish only come into its life when it is caught by a man?

The men in the south, the men below the boot, fish the waters there and stuff the fish with drugs and send them to the new world. They do this for the money, not for the glory of catching fish and giving them their lives. The men take their knives and cut the fish open and stuff the drugs inside, then sew the fish up and send them on ice to the great harbors of New York and Los Angeles.

Braque asked me the other day if I could write a novel using six words or less, and I said that I could and that when I did it would be the world's shortest novel.

It's good to be a painter like Braque and a writer like Hemingway.