Ishmael Reed Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
In 1995, I founded a storytelling program for children called Neighborhood Bridges in collaboration with the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, which is 15 elementary schools in the Twin Cities.
-
Kids are meant to believe that their stepping stone to massive money is 'The X Factor.' Luck is great, but most of life is hard work. We do not celebrate people who have made success out of serious hard work.
-
I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.
-
I think less than people think I do about politics. I care about writing.
-
I've forgotten what it's like to remember. I've lost the mindless confidence that a moment, an idea, a thought will be there for me later, the bravado of breezing through experience in the certainty that it will become part of my self, part of my story.
-
There are lots of things I am not good at. I'm not that good a singer. And I'm a good dad but a lousy husband because I work far too much and am not at home as much as I would like.
-
I look a lot like my father and his mother.
-
Many Africans succumb to the idea that they can't do things because of what society says. Images of Africa are negative - war, corruption, poverty. We need to be proud of our culture.
-
There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.
-
Up-tempo or slow tempo, I don't feel that one is better than the other.
-
I get on well with models, and I like to treat them well.
-
Almost all of "Julie" was shot on location in Carmel, which is a lovely resort town a little south of San Francisco. My co-star was Louis Jourdan, whom I liked very much. An amiable man, very gentle, very much interested in the people around him; we had a good rapport and I found talking to him a joy . . . We would take long walks on the beautiful Carmel beach, chatting by the hour.
-
It never ceases to surprise me, the people I get to work with. I'm in a French film with Sandrine Bonnaire? I adore Sandrine Bonnaire. I'm doing a picture for Robert Redford? The Sundance Kid? I have to pinch myself sometimes.
-
...as parents, we have to find the time and the energy to step in and help our children love reading. We can read to them, talk to them about what they're reading, and make time for this by turning off the television set ourselves. Libraries are a critical tool to help parents do this.
-
Dear God, Please teach me to forgive myself and others. Remove the walls that keep love out, behind which I am a prisoner. Heal my guilt and remove my anger, that I might be reborn. Make gentle my heart and strong my spirit and show me how to love. Please show me how to honor myself. Please teach me how to listen to myself. "Please program my mind to know itself, that I might at last be free. Teach me to appreciate your spirit that lives within me. Show me how to be good to myself, that I might know more fully the goodness of life. Amen.
-
I'm the most out-of-work actor I know. In the last two years I've basically taken meetings for a living.
-
I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.
-
All the poems have wolves in them. All but one. The most beautiful one of all. She dances in a ring of fire and throws off the challenge with a shrug.
