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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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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
York
Novel
Wasn
Started
Thought
Sent
Back
Suppose
Writing
Seriously
Years
Wrote

More quotes by 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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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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Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
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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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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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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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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We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
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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All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
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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...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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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
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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
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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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Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Ernest Gaines
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The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
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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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