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

- Ernest Gaines

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

- Ernest Gaines

I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.

- Ernest Gaines

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.

- Ernest Gaines

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

- Ernest Gaines

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

- Ernest Gaines

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

- Ernest Gaines

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

- Ernest Gaines

I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.

- Ernest Gaines