Genuine Hemingway — it is dialogue from his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 22 October 1926), Book II, Chapter 13, where the bankrupt Mike Campbell answers Bill Gorton. Two caveats travel badly: the book reads “Gradually and then suddenly,” and the words belong to a character, not to Hemingway speaking in his own voice.
“‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), Book II, ch. 13; quoted passage at p. 136 of the Scribner New York 1954 printing. The popular short form — "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly" — drops the 'and' and both speaker tags, and the words are Mike Campbell's, not Hemingway's in his own voice. Via Quotle.info.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use in the US, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed. Outside the US the 1926 text may still be in copyright: Hemingway died in 1961, so in life+70 countries it runs to 1 January 2032.
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In context
Evoking the world of Ernest Hemingway — American novelist & short-story writer · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1954. Theme: "How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where it actually comes from
Work
The Sun Also Rises
First published
22 October 1926 · Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York
Location
Book II, Chapter 13 — page 136 of the Scribner New York 1954 printing
Speakers
Bill Gorton asks; Mike Campbell answers
“Frightfully good tailor. Never believe it to see me now,” Mike said. “I used to pay him a hundred pounds a year just to keep him quiet. So he wouldn’t send me any bills. Frightful blow to him when I went bankrupt. It was right after the medals. Gave his letters rather a bitter tone.”
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
“What brought it on?”
“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
Book II, Chapter 13
Book II, Chapter 13. Mike Campbell has been telling the table about giving away a handful of miniature medals his tailor had picked out for him — they belonged to another customer, left to be cleaned — to girls in a nightclub, when Bill Gorton asks the question. The famous sentence is his throwaway reply, three lines before he blames his friends.
Quote Investigator ↗ traced the exchange to The Sun Also Rises and cites Book II, Chapter 13, quote page 136, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, marking the citation “verified with scans.”
Wikiquote ↗ carries the lines in its sourced section for the novel — not in Disputed or Misattributed — with the citation “Book 2, Ch. 13” and a note about the common misquote.
The scan-backed transcription at Wikisource ↗ shows the passage on page 136, immediately after Mike’s story about the tailor’s medals. The scan Wikisource proofread is the Scribner (New York) 1954 printing of the 1926 text — the same printing Quote Investigator checked.
The compressed form is the one that circulates: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly” is the wording on the Goodreads entry ↗, which drops the ‘and’ and both speaker tags.
✓Public domain
The Sun Also Rises was first published on 22 October 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, and 1926 works entered the US public domain on 1 January 2022 — Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain names this novel among them ↗. The 1926 text is therefore free to quote and reproduce in the United States.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What goes wrong with this one
Nobody has stolen this line from Hemingway — he wrote it. What travels is a filed-down version of the wording, plus a steady misunderstanding about who is actually speaking.
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The wording“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Compressed
The novel reads “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” The popular form drops the ‘and’ and both speaker tags. It is the wording on the Goodreads entry for the line ↗, and the wording John Green used on Reddit on 29 May 2014 when he named the sentence as his inspiration — “Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly” — as Quote Investigator records ↗.
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The speakerHemingway, quoted as if it were his own maxim Context lost
The sentence is dialogue. Wikiquote ↗ files it under its sourced The Sun Also Rises (1926) section and names the speakers: Bill Gorton asks, Mike Campbell answers. Hemingway wrote the line; a broke, half-drunk fictional debtor says it about his own creditors, not about markets or empires.
✕
A common misquote“It occurs first very slowly, then all at once” Wrong words
Wikiquote ↗ notes that Mike’s response “is often misquoted as ‘It occurs first very slowly, then all at once.’” Those are not the words on the page.
✕
A cousin lineJohn Green, not Hemingway Different book
“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once” is Hazel’s line in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (2012), not Hemingway’s. Quote Investigator ↗ credits Green and records that he pointed back to the bankruptcy exchange as the initial inspiration.
✓Hemingway wrote it, in 1926, as a joke about a man’s tailor and his creditors — and the book says “Gradually and then suddenly.” See it on page 136 ↗.
Context
Why it stuck
The line is a punchline, and it sits inside a longer joke. Mike Campbell has just finished telling the table how he cut a box of miniature medals off their backing and handed them out to girls in a nightclub, one each, as souvenirs — his tailor had picked the medals out for him, they turned out to belong to another customer who had left them to be cleaned, and the tailor wrote to him about it for months. Bill Gorton asks the obvious follow-up, and Mike answers without slowing down.
What made the answer portable is that its shape is true of far more than one fictional drunk’s creditors. It has become a default way of describing anything that decays quietly for a long time and then fails all at once — debt, illness, institutions, markets. Hemingway wrote it as comedy about a man who could not stop spending; it now gets quoted straight, usually with the ‘and’ sanded off.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The wording drift, in three lines
The book (1926): “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
In circulation: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — the form John Green quoted from memory on Reddit in 2014, and the form carried on the Goodreads entry for the line, with both speaker tags stripped out.
Also seen: “It occurs first very slowly, then all at once,” which Wikiquote flags as a misquote of Mike’s response.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1899–1961 · American novelist & short-story writer · Nobel Prize in Literature, 1954
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway built his reputation on the spare, understated prose that reshaped twentieth-century fiction. The Sun Also Rises (1926) was his first novel, drawn from the expatriate world of Paris and Pamplona he was living in at the time. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, and died in 1961.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), Book II, chap. 13; quoted passage at page 136 of the Scribner New York 1954 printing proofread at Wikisource — the printing Quote Investigator verified with scans (page numbering differs in the 1926 first edition). Verified 6 August 2018 by Quote Investigator; re-checked against the Wikisource scan.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/how-did-you-go-bankrupt-two-ways-gradually-then-suddenly/