Ernest Gaines
Ernest Gaines
Ernest James Gainesis an African-American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. Four of his works have been made into television movies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 January 1933
CountryUnited States of America
motivational respect integrity
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
conscience
I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.
stars african-american stripes
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
mistake book would-be
Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.
writing golden six
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
woods pieces earth
And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.
differences people world
We all have much more in common than we have difference. I would say that about people all over the world. They don't know how much in common that they have
motivational mean action
Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
wind broken
You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken.
change struggle past
There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.
heart artist blood
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 he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.
writing thinking who-i-am
I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
reading writing imagination
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.
writing missing singing
What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.