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Unfortunately, in the world today, we have dogmatic people entering into politics. I don't think the two mix.
Ishmael Reed
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Ishmael Reed
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: February 22
Author
Journalist
Lyricist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Songwriter
Writer
Chattanooga
Tennessee
Ishmael Scott Reed
Today
Think
Thinking
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Dogmatic
People
Entering
Unfortunately
Politics
Two
More quotes by Ishmael Reed
My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.
Ishmael Reed
I'm beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of deathamong Americans. What you don't know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright's character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.
Ishmael Reed
Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.
Ishmael Reed
Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out.
Ishmael Reed
I guess when it comes to this privileged White racist feminist movement they respect someone who treats them rough: John Wayne. Frank Sinatra. Phillip Roth.
Ishmael Reed
During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.'
Ishmael Reed
There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.
Ishmael Reed
I wasn't part of any sixties movement. I'm skeptical of movements. I'm part of the times that I'm in.
Ishmael Reed
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.
Ishmael Reed
I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.
Ishmael Reed
I've always wondered why European politicians as a group seemed brighter than American politicians as a group. Maybe it's becausemany American politicians have the race issue to fall back on. They become lazy, suspicious of innovative ideas, and as a result American institutions atrophy.
Ishmael Reed
When I say Afro-American aesthetic, I'm not just talking about the United States, I'm talking about the Americas. People in the Latin countries read my books because they share the same international aesthetic that I'm into and have been into for a long time. And it's multicultural.
Ishmael Reed
statistic: the us bureau of missing persons reports that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared leaving no solid clues nor traceonly a space in the lives of their friends.
Ishmael Reed
The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.
Ishmael Reed
I use non-fiction work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That wasn't the problem. I said that The Wire was a cliché! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life and casting all of the characters as inside traders.
Ishmael Reed
I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like amber or opaque.
Ishmael Reed
David Simon goes to the Jewish Weekly and said he's made all this money, but he can't enjoy it because of criticism by people like Ishmael Reed.
Ishmael Reed
Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.
Ishmael Reed
A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality.
Ishmael Reed
Do you think that Gwendolyn Brooks would give an award to someone who hated Black women, the lie that was circulated throughout New York and reached all the way down to Martinique where I was a guest Professor? The lie was circulated by people who don't read my books.
Ishmael Reed
