John Edgar Wideman

“All my life, I've been very aware of my body. I have always used it as a gauge of things. When I look at a person, and I see their body, that's the beginning of knowledge about them. Furthermore, I respect the body.”

“Thank you, Jesus, for blindness that every once in a great while allows one of us to hit the target.”

“I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.”

“The whole idea of spellbinding, of being an entertainer, being the center of the stage, making up words - that let me know that writing is nice.”

“I think I was kind of melancholy as a kid. I spent a lot of time inside my own head, a lot of time sort of staring into space wondering the hell was going on.”

“My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.”

“My father was intelligent and closed-mouthed. He knew a lot more than what he was ever going to tell you.”

“I lived with my mother and father and brothers and sisters some of the time; some of the time, my mother and father were feuding, so my mother would take us to live in my grandmother's house.”

“That's been my routine for years and years... Up early before everybody else, before I get connected, before I get bugged, before I have obligations. Get the writing done first, then be the person I want to be in other ways after that.”