Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Years
Wrote
York
Novel
Wasn
Started
Thought
Sent
Back
Suppose
Writing
Seriously
More quotes by Ernest Gaines
Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Ernest 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 Gaines
I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.
Ernest Gaines
Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.
Ernest 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 Gaines
Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.
Ernest 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 Gaines
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
Ernest Gaines
You going back, she said. You ain't going to run away from this, Grant.
Ernest Gaines
In all my stories and novels, no one ever escapes Louisiana. Maybe that is because my soul never left Louisiana, although my body did go to California.
Ernest 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 Gaines
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Ernest Gaines
I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
Ernest Gaines
...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.
Ernest Gaines
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
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Ernest 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 Gaines
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
Ernest Gaines
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
