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Don't Tell Me To Believe. Don't Tell Me To Believe In The Same God Or Laws That Men Believe In Who Commit These Murders. Don't Tell Me To Believe That God Can Bless This Country And That Men Are Judged By Their Peers. Who Among His Peers Judged Him? Was I There? Was The Minister There? Was Harry Williams There? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was My Aunt? Was Vivian? No, His Peers Did Not Judge Him, And I Will Not Believe.

-Ernest Gaines

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Don't Tell Me To

Ernest Gaines

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Don't Tell Me To Believe. Don't Tell Me To Believe In The Same God Or Laws That Men Believe In Who Commit These Murders. Don't Tell Me To Believe That God Can Bless This Country And That Men Are Judged By Their Peers. Who Among His Peers Judged Him? Was I There? Was The Minister There? Was Harry Williams There? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was My Aunt? Was Vivian? No, His Peers Did Not Judge Him, And I Will Not Believe.

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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.

The Artist Must Be Like A Heart Surgeon. He Must Approach Something With Sympathy, But With A Sort Of Coldness And Work And Work Until He Finds Some Kind Of Perfection In His Work. You Can't Have Blood Splashing All Over The Place. Things Must Be Done Very Cleanly.

...my Heart May Have Been In It But My Soul Was Not.

Sometimes You Got To Hurt Something To Help Something. Sometimes You Have To Plow Under One Thing In Order For Something Else To Grow.

I Have Learned As Much About Writing About My People By Listening To Blues And Jazz And Spirituals As I Have From Reading Novels. The Understatements In The Tenor Saxophone Of Lester Young, The Crystal, Haunting, Forever Searching Sounds Of John Coltrane, And The Softness And Violence Of Count Basie's Big Band - All Have Fired My Imagination As Much As Anything In Literature.

We Wait Till Now? Now, When We're Old Men, We Get To Be Brave?

You've Got To Bend With The Wind Or You're Broken.

Anytime A Child Is Born, The Old People Look In His Face And Ask Him If He's The One.

But Let Us Say He Was (guilty). Let Us For A Moment Say He Was (guilty). What Justice Would There Be To Take His Life? Justice, Gentlemen? Why, I Would Just As Soon Put A Hog In The Electric Chair As This.

All Writers Write About The Past, And I Try To Make It Come Alive So You Can See What Happened.

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.

You Learn From Music, From Watching Great Athletes At Work - How Disciplined They Are, How They Move. You Learn These Things By Watching A Shortstop At Work, How He Concentrates On One Thing At A Time. You Learn From Classic Music, From The Blues And Jazz, From Bluegrass. From All This, You Learn How To Sustain A Great Line Without Bringing In Unnecessary Words.

In All My Stories And Novels, No One Ever Escapes Louisiana. Maybe That Is Because My Soul Never Left Louisiana, Although My Body Did Go To California.

Don't Tell Me To Believe. Don't Tell Me To Believe In The Same God Or Laws That Men Believe In Who Commit These Murders. Don't Tell Me To Believe That God Can Bless This Country And That Men Are Judged By Their Peers. Who Among His Peers Judged Him? Was I There? Was The Minister There? Was Harry Williams There? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was My Aunt? Was Vivian? No, His Peers Did Not Judge Him, And I Will Not Believe.

I Have No More To Say Except This: We Must Live With Our Own Conscience.

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.

And That's All We Are Jefferson, All Of Us On This Earth, A Piece Of Drifting Wood. Until We - Each 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.

Everything's Been Said, But It Needs Saying Again.

Without Love For My Fellow Man And Respect For Nature, To Me, Life Is An Obscenity.

I Wanted To Be A Writer. I Wanted To Say Something About Home.

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.

There Will Always Be Men Struggling To Change, And There Will Always Be Those Who Are Controlled By The Past.

I Like The Sound Of People's Voices, And I Think What A Man Says Can Very Well Tell What He's Thinking, Whether He's Lying Or Not.

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.

If I Were To Give One Piece Of Advice, I Would Say To Never Accept Anything That You Hear Or See At Face Value. As A General Rule Of Thumb, Then The More You Question, The Better.

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I Want You To Show Them The Difference Between What They Think You Are And What You Can Be.

I Have Learned As Much About Writing About My People By Listening To Blues And Jazz And Spirituals As I Have By Reading Novels.

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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.

"you Going Back," She Said. "you Ain't Going To Run Away From This, Grant."

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He Told Us That Most Of Us Would Die Violently, And Those Who Did Not Would Be Brought Down To The Level Of Beasts.

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.

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The Six Golden Rules Of Writing: Read, Read, Read, And Write, Write, Write.

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Question Everything. Every Stripe, Every Star, Every Word Spoken. Everything.

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