Ernest Gaines Quotes
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Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave.
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And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?
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I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
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Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
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We all have much more in common than we have difference. I would say that about people all over the world. They don't know how much in common that they have
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The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.
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I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
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Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.
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Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
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Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
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I write with as much objectivity as I can.
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And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.
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I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
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Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.
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We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger - and who could blame him? - but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.
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I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.
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A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.
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If I were to give one piece of advice, I would say to never accept anything that you hear or see at face value. As a general rule of thumb, then the more you question, the better.
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The mark of fear is not easily removed.
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I like the sound of people's voices, and I think what a man says can very well tell what he's thinking, whether he's lying or not.
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"What for?" I said. "What for, Tante Lou? He treated me the same way he treated her. He wants me to feel guilty, just as he wants her to feel guilty. Well, I'm not feeling guilty, Tante Lou. I didn't put him there. I do everything I know how to do to keep people like him from going there. He's not going to make me feel guilty."
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He told us that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.
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I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.
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The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.