INTERVIEWER:
How much rewriting do you do?
HEMINGWAY:
It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
INTERVIEWER:
Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
HEMINGWAY:
Getting the words right.
Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21,
Interviewed by George Plimpton, The Paris Review, 1956