There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally. John Edgar Wideman More Quotes by John Edgar Wideman More Quotes From John Edgar Wideman My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice. John Edgar Wideman strong mother father Things seem to fall apart inevitably. John Edgar Wideman falling-apart seems fall I get off on anticipating and waiting much more than I get off on the actual event. John Edgar Wideman events waiting Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We have other kinds of languages, like mathematics, like music, like art, but there's always that gap. John Edgar Wideman distance trying art 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. John Edgar Wideman dreamer screw-ups world 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 being-human language dream There is no American history. There is no French history. There is no John Wideman. 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 fighting stars dream 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 ugly pain might My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read. John Edgar Wideman fat mother romantic father The primary thing writing and basketball share is the sense that each time you go out, each time you play or begin a piece, it's a new day. You can score 40 points one game, but the next game, those points don't count. You can win the Nobel Literature Prize, but that doesn't make the next sentence of the next book appear. John Edgar Wideman day game you time I think I was kind of melancholy as a kid. I spent a lot of time inside my own head, a lot of time sort of staring into space wondering the hell was going on. John Edgar Wideman think hell space time Silence marks time, saturates and shapes African-American art. Silences structure our music, fill the spaces - point, counterpoint - of rhythm, cadence, phrasing. John Edgar Wideman music silence time art For a young person, anybody who's sorting out and trying to make a life for himself or herself, to have the opportunity each day to set down - sit down and then set down thoughts, words - it's a crucial, crucial way of staying alive, of not allowing yourself and not allowing the culture outside yourself to totally dominate your life. John Edgar Wideman thoughts day life culture Too much is made for us; too much is given to us - even those of us who are underprivileged. The poverty is given to us. The difficulties are given to us. John Edgar Wideman difficulties us poverty too-much My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember. John Edgar Wideman place family church remember In Haiti, as I understand it, storytelling and history itself are not a business of necessarily elucidating facts or the truth of an incident, but finding the version that is most entertaining and therefore will get retold and live in immortality. John Edgar Wideman understand business truth history I always liked to write and had fun writing, but I didn't have any pretensions about being a writer. I liked to read and liked to putz around and write little stories or poems, but my thing was sports. John Edgar Wideman always writing fun sports My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina - well, both grandfathers were born in the South. John Edgar Wideman generation speak culture history When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that's not an accident, I mean, that habit of getting up in the morning and going to my writing first thing. John Edgar Wideman wake-up habit writing morning Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play. John Edgar Wideman my-life good myself life
