ERNEST GAINES

The mark of fear is not easily removed.

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

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

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

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

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.

Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation.

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

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

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.

I write with as much objectivity as I can.

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 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.

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 strength of my being, of my writing.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

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

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.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

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 ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

I knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

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.

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.