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Ishmael Reed Quotes about Writing

All Ishmael Reed Quotes Art Character Country Culture Education Past Style Writing quotes
No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Men, News
Ishmael Reed (1995). “Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down”

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Imagination, Poetry
Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Justice, Diversity

Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Men, Fleeting
Ishmael Reed (1978). “Shrovetide in old New Orleans”, Doubleday Books

Richard Price got a million dollar advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer in history.

Ishmael Reed
New York, Book, Writing
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

My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Mirrors, Hypocrisy
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

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

Richard Price, who has made a fortune writing fake ghetto books, says he takes a cab into the ghetto, transcribes Black speech for a brief time and returns home. His fake ghetto books have bought him a townhouse in Gramercy Park and home on Staten Island.

Ishmael Reed
Book, Home, Writing
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

Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.

Ishmael Reed
Writing, Thinking, Long
Ishmael Reed (1988). “Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper”, Scribner

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