A biography for Chester Himeshasn’t been written yet.
“I would sit in my room and become hysterical about the wild incredible story I was writing. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference.”
“I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.”
“When you get to mixing sex and religion, it will make anybody crazy.”
“American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.”