Ernest J. Gaines Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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

Ernest J. Gaines
There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

Ernest J. Gaines
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?

Ernest J. Gaines
Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

Ernest J. Gaines
Don't tell me to believe. Don't tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don't tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him, and I will not believe.

Ernest J. Gaines
How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

Ernest J. Gaines
King is probably one of three men of this century that I'll call heroic. A fantastic man as far as I'm concerned, for all that he did.

Ernest J. Gaines
Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.

Ernest J. Gaines
The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.

Ernest J. Gaines
I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.

Ernest J. Gaines
Good by mr wigin tell them im strong tell them im a man.

Ernest J. Gaines
What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.

Ernest J. Gaines
This earth is yours and don't let that man out there take it from you. It's yours because your people's bones lays in it; it's yours because their sweat and their blood done drenched this earth.

Ernest J. Gaines
I was paralyzed. Paralyzed. Yes, I had a mouth, but I didn't have a voice. I had legs, but I couldn't move. I had arms, but I couldn't lift them up to you. It took a man to do these things, and I wasn't a man. I was just some other brutish animal who could cheat, steal, rob, kill—but not stand.... They had branded that in us from the time of slavery.

Ernest J. Gaines
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.

Ernest J. Gaines
Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.

Ernest J. Gaines
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?- Check your egos at the door.

Ernest J. Gaines
Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave.

Ernest J. Gaines
"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."

Ernest J. Gaines
We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger - and who could blame him? - but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.

Ernest J. Gaines
And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.

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

Ernest J. Gaines
I like the sound of people's voices, and I think what a man says can very well tell what he's thinking, whether he's lying or not.

Ernest J. Gaines
I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.

Ernest J. Gaines
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.

Ernest J. Gaines
I would think a faith in God is one thing. I think that if we could change the whole world and keep the land is another thing. Change things yet keep keep the relationship is another thing.

Ernest J. Gaines
And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?

Ernest J. Gaines
We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?

Ernest J. Gaines
Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn't like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.

Ernest J. Gaines
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

Ernest J. Gaines