John Edgar Wideman Quotes
My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'
Quotes to Explore
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Anyone can wear any color. The question is about finding the right shade. There is a momentary trend to dark colors because when the financials are not that great, people go for black, navy and grey.
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The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.
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I'm not anti-middle-class in the slightest. Look at me! I am very pro people putting time and money and effort into trying to improve the world.
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Not to sound bad, but some girls are dumb. It's because they spend so much of their life trying to have the right look. On the other hand, some girls are just really smart. There are girls you can have conversations with that are healthy conversations. You can argue real life issues and solve problems together. That is what makes a woman sexy.
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Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better!
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In Men in Black, it was a very small character, no pun intended.
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Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.
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When I started modeling, they tried to pay black models less than they paid Caucasian models. I turned down those jobs because I knew what I was worth.
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I've been pretty lucky with neighbors. But back in 1998, I lived, like, literally next door to Wrigley Field in Chicago. And I had, like, 50,000 bad neighbors spread out over the course of one summer. I'm a diehard Cubs fan, but living right next to the ballpark, it's just - as you're trying to go to sleep, you can just, like, hear urination.
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When you consider the concept of vampirism, it is inherently part of a Western culture.
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New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce.
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Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.
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We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.
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There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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The fictive structure, my work, my imagination, my books are about the details, the huge construction about culture, Islamic culture or modern Turkey. They're all intertwined.
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I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
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In the modern road-running era, digital photography has intersected with weekend-warrior culture, creating a golden age of social-media humblebragging. For some, the marathon course is sacred ground. For others, it's a personal movie set.
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Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? … John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it. … We would have been failures if Obama had to do the same things we did.
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Everyone thinks something like 'The Hills' just falls into your lap. It's not true. You have to work for everything.
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Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.
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My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'
