The Bad and the Ugly

You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe it. Things aren't that way. It is only by showing both sides—3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to.

Ernest Hemingway to Dr. C. E. Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 153.