Ernest Gaines quotes

I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God. (Ernest Gaines)

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.

Ernest Gaines

King is probably one of three men of this century that I'll call heroic. A fantastic man as far as I'm concerned, for all that he did.

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

The mark of fear is not easily removed.

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

I was never threatened...I never knew anyone who was lynched. But there was subtle racism every day of my life. You could not speak to a white man unless he spoke to you first. On the sidewalk, I'd have to move so a white person could walk by.

Ernest Gaines

I would think a faith in God is one thing. I think that if we could change the whole world and keep the land is another thing. Change things yet keep keep the relationship is another thing.

Ernest Gaines

In dialogue, I'm dealing with the sounds I've heard. One of the reasons I often write from first person or multiple points of view is to hear the voices of different characters. Omniscient narration becomes a problem because, for me, the omniscient is my own voice narrating the story and then bringing in characters for dialogue.

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

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense. (Ernest Gaines)

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

Ernest Gaines

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

Ernest Gaines

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

Ernest Gaines

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

Ernest Gaines

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Ernest Gaines

Ernest Gaines - Image

Occupation: American Writer
Born: January 15, 1933
Died: November 5, 2019
Quotes count: 34
Wikipedia: Ernest Gaines

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