John Edgar Wideman Quotes

Quotes about:

• Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Dream, Fall, Enemy

  John Edgar Wideman (1996). “The Cattle Killing”

  48 Copy quote

• When it's played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Basketball, Dream, Air

  17 Copy quote

• A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Eye, Artist, Reality

  "John Edgar Wideman Against the World" by Thomas Chatterton Williams, www.nytimes.com. January 26, 2017.

  16 Copy quote

• I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• That split is inside all Americans. There are contradictions inside all of us about color and race. We've learned to cover them up and live with them and pretend that deep cleavage is not there. We all bear that illness.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Color, Race, Splits

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  13 Copy quote

• As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Work Out, Doing You, Hell

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  11 Copy quote

• Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Children, Wall, Kids

  10 Copy quote

• Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers. That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is. There is no American or Frenchhistory. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Dream, Distance, Fighting

  8 Copy quote

• You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Men, Color, Superhero

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  7 Copy quote

• Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Writing, Scary, Important

  John Edgar Wideman, Bonnie TuSmith (1998). “Conversations with John Edgar Wideman”, p.98, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• There's something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. And who I am, on different days, different moments, depends on different aspects of my past.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Past, Progress, Different

  Source: classic.esquire.com

  8 Copy quote

• When I'm writing, I'm thinking, "Well, this might be a book that I'll always be happy with, and certainly readers will be happy with." But another part of me knows that when I'm past the stage of writing, the book is gonna have good things about it, bad things about it - probably more bad than good. I just know that. That's who I am.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Writing, Past

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  7 Copy quote

• One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Children, Lessons, Might

  John Edgar Wideman, Bonnie TuSmith (1998). “Conversations with John Edgar Wideman”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Uncontrollable

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past."

  John Edgar Wideman

  Believe, Past, I Believe

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Feelings, Want, Reader

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• Everything is up for grabs, everything is relative. Except nothing is if you are serious about it because the moment you become serious about answering a question you have a stake in it. Relatively goes out of the window, in one sense because you're putting your a** out there - you are depending on the answer, you need the answer.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Serious, Window, Moments

  Source: classic.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Thinking, People, African American

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Dream, Language, Being Human

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Taken, Thoughtful, Years

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  9 Copy quote

• If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?

  John Edgar Wideman

  Powerful, People, Important

  4 Copy quote

• I don't like the way question marks look. They're really ugly. They look like blots. At some other point in my life, I might have disliked them because I never knew how to properly apply them. Also commas, and whether they were outside the quote or inside the quote - that all seemed like an unnecessary pain in the ass.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Pain, Ugly, Might

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable. That's one of the beauties of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it. There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally. If I had only a negative side of things to present, I think I would have much less of a drive to do it. Because what would be the point?

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach coming up as it is writing.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm still divided in my principles and what I think is right and what I'm actually able to do, whether talking about writing or being a citizen or being a husband or being a father. And I'm trying to get better.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Husband, Father, Writing

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

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