Ernest Gaines

“I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.”

“A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.”

“I knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.”

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

“In the beginning, I tried to be a more cosmopolitan writer, but I realized that I was a country boy, and I had to deal with things I knew about and where I came from.”

“The mark of fear is not easily removed.”

“I write with as much objectivity as I can.”

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

“I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.”

“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.”

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

“I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation.”

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