Quote

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 Gaines

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ernest Gaines
Age: 86 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 15
Died: 2019
Died: November 5
Novelist
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
Oscar
Louisiana
Ernest Gaines
Ernest James Gaines
Others
None
Didn
Dying
Anything
Needed
Even
Respect
Something
Teacher
Would
Knew
Love
Enemy
Enemies
Like
Tell
Hated

More quotes by Ernest Gaines

Image
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 Gaines
Image
I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
Ernest Gaines
Image
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 Gaines
Image
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
Ernest Gaines
Image
But let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
Ernest Gaines
Image
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
Image
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
Ernest Gaines
Image
He told us that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.
Ernest Gaines
Image
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 Gaines
Image
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 Gaines
Image
We all have much more in common than we have difference. I would say that about people all over the world. They don't know how much in common that they have
Ernest Gaines
Image
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Ernest Gaines
Image
I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.
Ernest Gaines
Image
Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.
Ernest Gaines
Image
Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.
Ernest Gaines
Image
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Ernest Gaines
Image
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 Gaines
Image
Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Ernest Gaines
Image
What for? I said. What for, Tante Lou? He treated me the same way he treated her. He wants me to feel guilty, just as he wants her to feel guilty. Well, I'm not feeling guilty, Tante Lou. I didn't put him there. I do everything I know how to do to keep people like him from going there. He's not going to make me feel guilty.
Ernest Gaines
Image
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 Gaines