Conversations with Ernest Gaines Quotes

“You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“Well, in San Francisco if someone's against you, they know how to vote you out of an area. If someone's against you in Louisiana, or if I wrote a book and they did not like it or me in Louisiana, they might shoot me anytime.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“I don't care what a man is. I mean, a great artist is like a great doctor. I don't care how racist he is. If he can show me how to operate on a heart so that I can cure a brother, or cure someone else, I don't give a damn what the man thinks; he has taught me something. And that is valuable to me. And that is valuable to others and man as a whole. ”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“Writing is too goddamned hard for me to think about a soul in teh world ... I don't think about a soul, but just try to get those goddamned characters to act right.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“We've only been living in these ghettos for seventy-five years or so, but the other three hundred years -- I think this is worth writing about. I think we've made tremendous sacrifices, we've shown tremendous strength. In the ghetto you see a lot of frustration; you see very little strength.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with 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 J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines

“I hope when I die, they won't put on my tombstone, 'He wrote Miss Jane Pittman.' Put anything else, but don't put just that. ”
― Ernest J. Gaines, Conversations with Ernest Gaines