The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have the justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they’re safe. They’re safe with me. They’re safe with Reverend Ambrose. I don’t want them to feel safe with you any more.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines Quotes

Ain’t we all been hurt by slavery?

— Ernest J. Gaines

We must live with our own conscience. Each and every one of us must live with his own conscience.

— Ernest J. Gaines

It came from a piece of old wood that he found in the yard somewhere. That’s what we all are, Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we – each one of us, individually – decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better. Because we need you to be and want you to be.” – Grant.

— Ernest J. 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

Go and be fish again.

— Ernest J. Gaines

The sky blue blue, Mr. Wiggins.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Memories wasn’t a place, memories was in the mind.

— Ernest J. Gaines

I spoke to the Old Man a couple of times, but I’m sure He didn’t hear a word I said. He had quit listening to man a million years ago. Now all He does is play chess by Himself or sit around playing solitary with old cards.

— Ernest J. Gaines

The heavier the burden, the longer they look at you. And Miss Julie looked at me a long, long time.

— Ernest J. Gaines

I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Why?” I kept on asking myself. “Why? Who is this boy and why?” I knew that white men bonded colored boys out of jail for a few hundred dollars and worked them until they had gotten all their money back two and three times over. But I was trying to figure out why Marshall Hebert would do this when he already had more people than he needed. Now I knew. This little old lady had the finger on him, too.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Plege legen toda flag. Ninety state. ‘Merica. Er – er – yeah, which it stand. Visibly. Amen.

— Ernest J. Gaines

You wanted the past changed, Reverend Martin,” she told him. “Even He can’t do that. So that leaves nothing but the future. We work toward the future.

— Ernest J. Gaines

No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, how much you love, they catch you off guard one day and break you.

— Ernest J. Gaines

That’s what life is about, doing as good as you can. When the times comes for them to lay you down in the long black hole, they can say one thing: ‘He did as good as he could.’ That’s the best thing you can say for a man. Horse breaker or yard sweeper, let them say the poor boy did it good as he could.

— Ernest J. Gaines

Tell Nannan I walked.

— Ernest J. Gaines

My six words of advice to writers are: “Read, read, read, write, write, write.

— Ernest J. Gaines

They had chopped wood here too; then they were gone. Gone to the fields, the small towns, the cities – where they died. There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or who had been sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death in a nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary for manslaughter. And there were others who did not go anywhere but simply died slower.

— Ernest J. Gaines

The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have the justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they’re safe. They’re safe with me. They’re safe with Reverend Ambrose. I don’t want them to feel safe with you any more.

— Ernest J. Gaines
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