“Only work heals those stranger wounds, those sick deep wants that clamor in one’s memory.”~1931 letter to Cam Becket

“I’m a holiday diet; I’m only bearable to myself—in solitude—as ordinary rations.”~1932 letter to Bertrand de Jouvenel

“I am going to be saddled with this wearying, half-finished, unquiet ache until the damn thing is done.”~1934 letter to Cam Becket

“You wouldn’t believe how the world narrows when you have to say I instead of She.”~1934 letter to Cam Becket

“A man is no use to me, unless he can live without me.”~1936 letter to Allen Grover

“I make myself a feast of your letters.”~1936 letter to Allen Grover

“My head is a gooey puddle of despairs and dissatisfactions and worries about being a stinking writer.”~1937 letter to Ernest Hemingway

“Either this book must be just right and as alive as five minutes ago, or it won’t be a book and I’ll sit and nurse a lost year as best I can.”~1937 letter to Eleanor Roosevelt

“Now Hitler has set the standard for the world, and truth is rarer than radium.”~1938 letter to Eleanor Roosevelt

“Perhaps because I try to be a writer, perhaps because I am a woman, I cannot avoid seeing history always in terms of people.”~1939 letter to Eleanor Roosevelt

“I have a steady pain in my head from thinking about the folly of mankind.”~1939 letter to Ernest Hemingway

“Time to bathe and drink whiskey.”~1940 letter to Hortense Flexner

“I am sick to the nausea point of all the idiot things men have been shouting about in their ignorance, one way or the other.”~1941 letter to Eleanor Roosevelt

“I am glad you are not here in a specially made suit being noble in bars.”~1943 letter to Ernest Hemingway

“The way I feel is: all passes, books alone remain. A book is a hard beautiful imperishable thing.”~1943 letter to Ernest Hemingway

Gellhorniana

Images are from Martha Gellhorn’s personal papers at Boston University (MGPP), Ernest Hemingway’s personal papers at JFK Library (EHPP), and Princeton University (Princeton)