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History is the story of warfare between secret societies.
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
Warfare
Societies
Secret
Story
History
Stories
More quotes by Ishmael Reed
I try to do what has never been done before.
Ishmael Reed
I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.
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
I asked Joe Weixlmann why he would print a death threat like that in light of the fact that there are all of these armed ideological nuts wandering around loose. He said that for him, to ice someone means to reprimand them.
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
If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.
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'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
What was once dormant is now a Creeping Thing
Ishmael Reed
As for [Amiri] Baraka, he and I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship.
Ishmael Reed
I was roommates with 2 of the guys who were influential in forming the Black Arts philosophy. I called them goons, and [Amiri] Baraka took offense at that. But if you read his autobiography, the night we went up there for a fundraiser, he talks about how he wished that some violence would happen to us. How do you like Baraka as a gracious host
Ishmael Reed
Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.
Ishmael Reed
One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.
Ishmael Reed
For generations comedians have made jokes about Scots-Irish in the South inter-breeding. I am my own grandpa and all that stuff you know, because they all were marrying their first cousins.
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
Richard Price, who has made a fortune writing fake ghetto books, says he takes a cab into the ghetto, transcribes Black speech for a brief time and returns home. His fake ghetto books have bought him a townhouse in Gramercy Park and home on Staten Island.
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
I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like amber or opaque.
Ishmael Reed
Tea Party members go to meetings on Medicare scooters.
Ishmael Reed
That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive that kind of sentence he did, which was to go to prison on the weekends I think he lectured there-an outside lecturer.
Ishmael Reed
