Ernest Gaines Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I really tend to write in retrospect.
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When I write a movie, I write it for me.
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I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.'
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In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then.
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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In fact, I don't read newspapers any longer.
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Before I liked to write, I liked to type. I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter.
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My audience has really become a very diverse group of people. It's not just 15-year-old girls. That's kind of what allows me to write from all the different places I want to write from.
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I never read about photography.
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I was always falling in love at a very young age - kindergarten is when I can remember. There was always a crush. And when I was in sixth grade, I started picking up guitar, so I started wanting to write about it and sing about it.
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I just write mechanical things.
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I never write my stories as a wake-up call as such. I simply explore the kinds of situations that I find personally challenging by placing characters into situations that challenge them in similar ways.
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I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.
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'The One-Eyed Man' is a novel that was one I never intended to write.
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Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better.
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If you want to get an email to Robert Redford, you send it to his assistant, and she prints it out. And then he will write you a letter, which is incredibly rare and incredibly classy. Unfortunately, I can't be that removed from technology.
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You can't believe everything you read. I am only six foot three, by the way.
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I write in the studio.
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I don't think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won't learn anything unless you enjoy it.
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Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.
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I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
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Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.
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The minister should preach as if he felt that although the congregation own the church, and have bought the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is worth no more than any other man's, but it is all he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a salary. The terms are by no means equal. If a parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go elsewhere and get another pew, but the preacher cannot get another soul.
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The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
