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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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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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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Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
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Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.
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Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
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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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I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
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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 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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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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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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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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The mark of fear is not easily removed.
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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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"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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You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.
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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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The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.