74 Quotes by Ernest Gaines

We all have much more in common than we have difference. I would say that about people all over the world. They don’t know how much in common that they have.

You’ve got to bend with the wind or you’re broken.

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.

Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn’t like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.

I still don’t even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I’m still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?

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.

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.

We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger – and who could blame him? – but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.