I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
From Ernest Gaines
I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.
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.
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
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 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.
I write with as much objectivity as I can.
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.
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.
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives