Gayl Jones famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I learned to write by listening to people talk. I still feel that the best of my writing comes from having heard rather than having read.
-- Gayl Jones

#Writing #People #Listening
There are things that a woman sings, and only a woman knows the full meaning. You may sing for men as well as for women, but only a woman knows your full meaning. I am not a feminista. I only think a woman should be true to who she believes herself to be. Or who she wants herself to be. Or who she imagines herself to be. I don't know what I mean, or whether I'm true myself to any of that. I don't think there are many of us who are true to our possibilities.
-- Gayl Jones

#Believe #Mean #Men
When you tell a story you automatically talk about traditions, but they're never separate from the people, the human implications. You're talking about your connections as a human being.
-- Gayl Jones

#Talking #People #Connections
A lot of people they donâ€™t know that Africans even named the stars, that different peoples, different so-called native peoples, have their own names for the stars, and have star charts just as accurate as the Chinese star charts, which are more ancient than the European star charts or even the Arabic ones or the star charts of the New World civilizations. Everybodyâ€™s got their own cosmology. Everybodyâ€™s got their own description of the universe.
-- Gayl Jones

#Stars #Civilization #Names
My great-grandmama told my grandmama the part she lived through that my grandmama didn't live through and my grandmama told my mama what they both lived through and my mama told me what they all lived through and we were suppose to pass it down like that from generation to generation so we'd never forget.
-- Gayl Jones

#Generations #Mama #Never Forget
I don't like that word 'discovery.' ... Sinatra was the first one to call Ray Charles a genius, he spoke of 'the genius of Ray Charles.' And after that everybody called him a genius. They didn't call him a genius before that though. He was a genius but they didn't call him that. ... If a white man hadn't told them, they wouldn't've seen it. ... Like, you know, they say Columbus discovered America, he didn't discover America.
-- Gayl Jones

#Men #Discovery #White
A lot of people they don’t know that Africans even named the stars, that different peoples, different so-called native peoples, have their own names for the stars, and have star charts just as accurate as the Chinese star charts, which are more ancient than the European star charts or even the Arabic ones or the star charts of the New World civilizations. Everybody’s got their own cosmology. Everybody’s got their own description of the universe.
-- Gayl Jones

#Stars #Civilization #Names
You change the rhythm of the talk and respoonse and you change the rhythm between the talk and the response.
-- Gayl Jones

#Rhythm #Response
I believe that all literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature. . . . I'm not sure one can be a creative writer and a politician -- not a "good" politician.
-- Gayl Jones

#Believe #Creative #Political

This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.
Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.
He [Hemingway] used a stand-up work place he had fashioned out of the top of of a bookcase near his bed. His portable typewriter was snugged in there and papers were spread along the top of the bookcase on either side of it. He used a reading board for longhand writing.
Iâ€™m not a fan of â€˜write what you know.â€™ If you donâ€™t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing â€˜The Year of Living Biblically.â€™ That was kind of the point â€“ to learn.
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
God does not so much want us to do things as to let people see what He can do.
We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.
People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.
I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.
All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.

Gayl Jones famous quotes

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