Latest Ishmael Reed Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I think there are fundamentalists all over the world. I think all religions have fundamentalists who have different interpretations of scriptures that are very vague.

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Having Fun, Different

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Unfortunately, in the world today, we have dogmatic people entering into politics. I don't think the two mix.

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Two, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I have T.V. on all the time when I'm writing. I have music on. I'm engaged with the world.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, World, Engaged

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Writing, Boxing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• As a writer, you explore all kinds of different emotions.

  Ishmael Reed

  Different, Emotion, Kind

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• For generations comedians have made jokes about Scots-Irish in the South inter-breeding. "I am my own grandpa" and all that stuff; you know, because they all were marrying their first cousins.

  Ishmael Reed

  Cousin, Grandpa, Comedian

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Style, Amber

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I get most my information about what's happening in the United States from reports and studies, which are often in conflict with what you read on the editorial pages, or handouts from right wing institutions like the American Enterprise Institute.

  Ishmael Reed

  Wings, United States, Pages

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Whites have been the most subsidized group in the history of the United States and maybe the history of the world, while Blacks were enslaved and were the assets of Whites.

  Ishmael Reed

  Groups, United States, World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.

  Ishmael Reed

  Native American, Illinois, Land

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The plays raise issues that are ignored in other forums.

  Ishmael Reed

  Play, Issues, Ignored

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I have Black guys who tell me they put my books on their bed stands to read at night like something for guidance or information. That really pleases me a lot. I think my work has changed some things. It's changed me.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Night, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I reached the age of 70, because I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology" that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals. These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media.

  Ishmael Reed

  Native American, Media, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In Crash, you've got a pathological cop who at the end justifies police brutality. He tells the naïve, young cop that you're going to end up the same as him. He's the most sympathetic character in the movie. So, the naïve cop ends up murdering this Black kid and tries to cover up the evidence. It sort of justifies police brutality and the planting of evidence which is what happened in the O.J. Simpson case.

  Ishmael Reed

  Character, Kids, Police

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.

  Ishmael Reed

  Believe, Enemy, Asian

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• My generation of writers has been prone to premature illness and death, especially the women. When Black male writers meet it's like a session of the American Diabetic Association.

  Ishmael Reed

  Black, Males, Generations

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out.

  Ishmael Reed

  Stress, Media, Propaganda

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Anxiety, Black

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I walked out on American Gangster: this evil piece of dreck. Defenders of this junk say that these movies give Black actors jobs. So did "Birth of a Nation."

  Ishmael Reed

  Jobs, Evil, Giving

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I'm sure that a previous generation of Jews who published radical newspapers and journals would be critical of [David] Simon's projects. These were left wingers who suffered casualties in some of bloodiest strikes in American history.

  Ishmael Reed

  Would Be, Generations, American History

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story.

  Ishmael Reed

  Mother, Children, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Another California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically a Black issue.

  Ishmael Reed

  California, White, Issues

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• How does the [New York] Times treat White pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the Philadelphia suburbs. which included emergency admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words: the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic" in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug addict is a housewife or suburban White woman.

  Ishmael Reed

  New York, Epidemics, California

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I use non-fiction work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That wasn't the problem. I said that "The Wire" was a cliché! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life and casting all of the characters as inside traders.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Character, Wire

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his brilliant short story "Gold Coast."

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, White, Long

  Source: www.counterpunch.org