Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.
Ernest GainesAll writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
Ernest GainesI 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.
Ernest Gaines