Ernest J. Gaines Quotes

#1. Writing is too goddamned hard for me to think about a soul in teh world ... I don't think about a soul, but just try to get those goddamned characters to act right.

Ernest J. Gaines

#2. Go and be fish again.

Ernest J. Gaines

#3. We ain't giving up," I said. "We done gone this far.

Ernest J. Gaines

#4. We must live with our own conscience. Each and every one of us must live with his own conscience.

Ernest J. Gaines

#5. The sky blue blue, Mr. Wiggins.

Ernest J. Gaines

#6. That's man's way. To prove something. Day in, day out he must prove he is a man. Poor Fool.

Ernest J. Gaines

#7. We've only been living in these ghettos for seventy-five years or so, but the other three hundred years -- I think this is worth writing about. I think we've made tremendous sacrifices, we've shown tremendous strength. In the ghetto you see a lot of frustration; you see very little strength.

Ernest J. Gaines

#8. ...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.

Ernest J. Gaines

#9. Well, in San Francisco if someone's against you, they know how to vote you out of an area. If someone's against you in Louisiana, or if I wrote a book and they did not like it or me in Louisiana, they might shoot me anytime.

Ernest J. Gaines

#10. I think it's God that makes people care for people, Jefferson. I think it's God makes children play and people sing. I believe it's God that brings loved ones together. I believe it's God that makes trees bud and food grow out of the earth.

Ernest J. Gaines

#11. My master jecked up my dress and gived my mistress the whip and told her to teach me a lesson. Every time she hit me she asked me what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown. She hit me again: what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown.

Ernest J. Gaines

#12. I tried to decide just how I should respond to them. Whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like the nigger that I was supposed to be.

Ernest J. Gaines

#13. Then he spoke of James Joyce. He told about Joyce's family, his religion, his education, his writing. He spoke of a book called Dubliners and a story in the book titled "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." Regardless of race, regardless of class, that story was universal, he said.

Ernest J. Gaines

#14. Memories wasn't a place, memories was in the mind.

Ernest J. Gaines

#15. Ain't we all been hurt by slavery?

Ernest J. Gaines