Ernest Gaines

“All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.”

“In the beginning, I tried to be a more cosmopolitan writer, but I realized that I was a country boy, and I had to deal with things I knew about and where I came from.”

“I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I eve...”

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”

“When I'm sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs.”

“I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.”

“I write with as much objectivity as I can.”

“What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great stre...”

“Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.”

“Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.”

“I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.”

“Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.”

“The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.”

“I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.”