Ernest Gaines

We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?

I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.

...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.

Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.

The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

I still don't even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?

You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

The mark of fear is not easily removed.

Don't tell me to believe. Don't tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don't tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him, and I will not believe.

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.

I knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.

Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.

He told us that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.