Who really said it

The first draft of anything is garbage

Not Hemingway’s exact words — a euphemistic paraphrase Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961 · American novelist & short-story writer

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No source records Hemingway saying “garbage.” The closest attested version — “The first draft of anything is shit” — comes from a memoir published 23 years after his death, recalling a 1934 conversation from memory.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“The first draft of anything is garbage” Not Hemingway's exact words -- closest documented version is "The first draft of anything is shit," from a 1984 memoir. Source: Quotle.info

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Ernest Hemingway — American novelist, short-story writer & journalist. Theme: "The first draft of anything is garbage". 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.

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Provenance

The source

Closest attested wording: “The first draft of anything is shit.”
Recorded in: With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba
Memoirist: Arnold Samuelson
Published: 1984 (Random House), recalling a 1934 conversation

The first draft of anything is shit.

As recorded by Arnold Samuelson, quoting Hemingway’s advice to him in Key West, 1934. The word “garbage” does not appear in this or any other documented source.

Quote Investigator's full citation history of this quote

How we verified this

The earliest documented appearance is Arnold Samuelson’s memoir With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba ↗, published in 1984, recording a remark Hemingway made to him in 1934.
Samuelson’s manuscript was not published in his lifetime — it surfaced only after his death and reached print via Esquire in 1985 and the book in 1984, per Quote Investigator’s timeline ↗.
Quote Investigator’s full citation trail documents only two variants, “shit” and “rubbish” — never “garbage,” per its sourced investigation ↗.
The “garbage” wording circulates uncited on quote-aggregator pages such as Quotes Street ↗, which gives no source at all.

The exact phrase “garbage” has no identifiable origin to attach rights to. Even the attested “shit” wording sits inside Arnold Samuelson’s in-copyright 1984 memoir (his estate/Random House), not in any Hemingway-authored text, so no public-domain claim can honestly be made here.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This is less a case of the quote belonging to someone else, and more a case of a real (if shaky) quote being re-worded until the paper trail disappears.

Internet quote-aggregator sites Euphemistic swap

Sites like Quotes Street ↗ print “garbage” with no citation at all — a family-friendly swap for “shit” that has taken on a life of its own.

Arnold Samuelson (secondhand source) 50-year gap

Even the “shit” version traces to one source: Samuelson’s memoir, written from memory and not published until 1984–85, decades after the 1934 exchange it describes, as Quote Investigator lays out ↗.

Hemingway likely did say something like this to Samuelson in 1934 about rewriting A Farewell to Arms — but the words on quote sites today, “garbage” included, are several steps removed from anything he is actually documented to have said. See Quote Investigator’s full history ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The line usually quoted as “The first draft of anything is garbage” is a softened, internet-era paraphrase. No book, letter, or interview ever printed those words from Hemingway.

The closest real source is Arnold Samuelson’s 1984 memoir With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba, which recalls Hemingway telling him in 1934: “The first draft of anything is shit.” Samuelson was a 22-year-old aspiring writer who spent about a year as Hemingway’s deckhand and pupil in Key West; his manuscript went unpublished until after his own death, so the exact wording rests on one man’s decades-old memory, not on anything Hemingway wrote himself.

No citation anywhere uses the word “garbage.”

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Failure Work Creativity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: full citation historyquoteinvestigator.com

The most thorough documented timeline of this quote, from 1934 through 1997

Wikiquote: Ernest Hemingwayen.wikiquote.org

Community-sourced list of attributed and disputed Hemingway quotations

Barry Popik: word/phrase origin researchbarrypopik.com

Independent etymology research citing the same 1984/1985/1989 print appearances

The Paris Review: The Art of Fiction No. 21theparisreview.org

Hemingway's 1958 interview discussing his revision process (does not contain this quote)

Goodreads: quote pagegoodreads.com

Widely shared version using the attested "shit" wording, illustrating how it differs from "garbage"

The Iceberg Theory

Who was Ernest Hemingway?

Ernest Hemingway

1899–1961 · American novelist, short-story writer & journalist

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer celebrated for a spare, understated prose style that reshaped 20th-century fiction. His novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Samuelson, Arnold. With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. New York: Random House, 1984 — earliest documented print source (via Quote Investigator's citation research), recording a 1934 remark; no source uses the wording “garbage.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The first draft of anything is garbage’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-first-draft-of-anything-is-garbage