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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

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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
Like
Tell
Hated
Others
None
Didn
Dying
Anything
Needed
Even
Respect
Something
Teacher
Would
Knew
Love
Enemy
Enemies

More quotes by Ernest Gaines

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Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Ernest Gaines
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Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.
Ernest Gaines
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You going back, she said. You ain't going to run away from this, Grant.
Ernest Gaines
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We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
Ernest Gaines
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Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Ernest Gaines
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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
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I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
Ernest Gaines
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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
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I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.
Ernest Gaines
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Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.
Ernest Gaines
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Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.
Ernest Gaines
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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
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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
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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
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...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.
Ernest Gaines
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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
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I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.
Ernest Gaines
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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
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I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
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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