Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Ernest James Gaines (born January 15, 1933), author. He is best known for his 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and his 1971 novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

Ernest J. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the National Humanities Medal, and inducted into the French Order of Arts and Letters as a Chevalier.

"Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything." - Ernest J. Gaines

"Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow." - Ernest J. Gaines

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" - Ernest J. Gaines

"You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken." - Ernest J. Gaines

"Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing." - Ernest J. Gaines

"I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience." - Ernest J. Gaines

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