Chester Himes Quotes

#1. I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

Megan Abbott

#2. It seemed so illogical to punish some poor criminal for doing something that civilization taught him how to do so he could have something that civilization taught him how to want. It seemed to him as wrong as if they had hung the gun that shot the man.

Chester Himes

#3. Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made.

Daniel Schorr

#4. People like Spencer Tracy held up because they had the background originally, but to this day they never have changed Mr. Gable's role, or most of them.

Jackie Cooper

#5. Always try to turn a marketing disaster into a marketing opportunity.

Lester Wunderman

#6. For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties.

Louis Finkelstein

#7. what i really need is a dead man.

Chester Himes

#8. Give your body and mind to worldly enjoyments, and the world will destroy them both. Devote them to God and his service, and you will enjoy bodily health, peace of mind, and spiritual joy.

Swami Prabhavananda

#9. Growth is the surviving influence in all our lives. The tree will send up its trunk in thick profusion from land burned black by atom bombs. Children will grow from poverty and filth and oppression and develop honor, integrity, contribute to all mankind.

Chester Himes

#10. I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

Chester Himes

#11. 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.

Chester Himes

#12. The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books.

Chester Himes

#13. Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.

Chester Himes

#14. Man cannot live without some knowledge of the purpose of life. If he can find no purpose in life he creates one in the inevitability of death.

Chester Himes

#15. When you get to mixing sex and religion, it will make anybody crazy.

Chester Himes

#16. There is an indomitable quality within the human spirit that cannot be destroyed; a face deep within the human personality that is impregnable to all assaults.

Chester Himes

#17. 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.

Chester Himes

#18. Our highest ambition is to be included in the stream of American life, to be permitted to "play the game" as any other American; and is opposed to anything that aids in the exclusion; the face may be Africa, but the heart has the beat of Wall Street.

Chester Himes

#19. Martyrs are needed to create incidents. Incidents are needed to create revolutions. Revolutions are needed to create progress.

Chester Himes