[Ads-l] Quote Origin: All True Stories End in Death

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

U.S. novelist Ernest Hemingway has been credited with the fatalistic
remark in the subject line. I received a request to investigate.

This precise statement cannot be found in Hemingway's oeuvre, but
there is a partial match in his 1932 book titled "Death in the
Afternoon" which examined Spanish bullfighting. Hemingway discussed
the mating of bulls and cows. He suggested that a bull which refused
to mate with multiple cows would be sent to the bullring, which meant
death. A woman suggested that this topic was sad.

[Begin excerpt]
I find that a sad story, sir.
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is
no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Especially do all
stories of monogamy end in death, and your man who is monogamous while
he often lives most happily, dies in the most lonely fashion. There is
no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has
lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people
love each other there can be no happy end to it.
[End excerpt]

Over time, Hemingway’s quotation has been streamlined to yield the
concise version. Here is an overview of this saying together with
variants, dates, and attributions:

1932: Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death
(Ernest Hemingway)
1954: All stories end in death (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway)
1965: The best love-stories end in death (Ladislaus Boros — translated
from German to English)
1966: All stories end in death (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway)
1967: All great love stories end in death (Lionel Trilling)
1971 Nov: Every true story ends in death (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway)
1971 Dec: All true stories end in death (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway)
2001: All true stories end in death (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway)

Here is a link to the Quote Investigator article:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2026/08/25/story-death/

Feedback welcome
Garson O'Toole

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org