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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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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
Respect
Nature
Without
Men
Love
Life
Obscenity
Fellow
More quotes by Ernest Gaines
Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.
Ernest Gaines
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
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
We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
Ernest Gaines
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
Ernest 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 Gaines
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
Ernest 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 Gaines
I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
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
...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.
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
I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.
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
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
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
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Ernest Gaines
Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Ernest Gaines
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
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
