129 Quotes by Ishmael Reed

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

A hot mean and bitchy desert with a naturally formed misanthropic mood seemed to be saying well Loop good buddy, how you want it dished up, scorpion bite, rattlesnake, order anything you see.

What is the American fetish about highways?They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.But what is after them?They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress.

Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley.

Dualism::In Ralph Ellison's Invisible ManI am outside of history. i wish i had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in the cage.i am outside of history. its hungrier than i thot.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.