Ernest Gaines Quotes

52 quotes in 772 categories

• Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
• But let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life?…
• 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?…
• Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything.…
• "What for?" I said. "What for, Tante Lou? He treated me the same way he treated her. He wants me to feel guilty, just as…
• "You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."
• We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of…
• 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…
• You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a…
• The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
• I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.
• We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
• I like the sound of people's voices, and I think what a man says can very well tell what he's thinking, whether he's lying or…
• And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier.…
• There will always be men struggling...
• Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
• Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.
• The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until…
• Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.
• I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

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