Himes Quotes & Sayings

The fundamentalists, in their struggle against the modernists, had identified the "Social Gospel" and the concern for social justice expressed in Charles Sheldon's seminal work asking "What would Jesus do?" as a hallmark of heresy. Rice and other fundamentalists viewed the "Social Gospel" as tantamount to believing in salvation through "works" rather than faith. Salvation, they averred, was the result of God's unearned grace rather than anything humans might do for themselves. They charged the modernists with imagining salvation might be achieved by working to improve society. — Andrew Himes

Our highest ambition is to be included in the stream of American life, to be permitted to "play the game" as any other American; and is opposed to anything that aids in the exclusion; the face may be Africa, but the heart has the beat of Wall Street. — Chester Himes

We need financial regulation that allows businesses and the banks they use to have access to the tools that help keep prices of consumer goods - like groceries and home heating oil - steady, while ensuring that the taxpayers are never again on the hook for the types of wild bets that helped crash the economy in 2008. — Jim Himes

Growth is the surviving influence in all our lives. The tree will send up its trunk in thick profusion from land burned black by atom bombs. Children will grow from poverty and filth and oppression and develop honor, integrity, contribute to all mankind. — Chester Himes

American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form. — Chester Himes

I go out and take oysters, clams and mussels every 2 weeks or so during late fall, winter and early spring. I particularly like to go out when there is a below-average ebb tide because that exposes clamming grounds and oysters that are usually under water. — Jim Himes

When you get to mixing sex and religion, it will make anybody crazy. — Chester Himes

I remain as committed as ever to working across party lines with anyone who believes we must invest in the future of our economy by revitalizing our transportation infrastructure, ensuring every child is getting a world class education, and spurring research and development of new technologies. — Jim Himes

Kane hugged Ghost to him. Ghost clung, pressing his face into Kane's chest. "Whether you are Luca or Ghost or you choose a new name, none of that will change how I feel about you. Your family may not be the way it was before you got lost, but I am here. You came back to me. And I am never going to let you go. — S.J. Himes

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal. — Chester Himes

what i really need is a dead man. — Chester Himes

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life ... Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism. — Chester Himes

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing. — Megan Abbott

It felt like fate. That if Gray Shadow and Caius could not find their way to each other, their bloodlines eventually did. — S.J. Himes

There is an indomitable quality within the human spirit that cannot be destroyed; a face deep within the human personality that is impregnable to all assaults. — Chester Himes

Different influences at different times in my career, and some have stayed with me more, some less. Chester Himes. Ralph Dennis, who wrote a series called Hardman which is a big influence on the Hap and Leonard novels. Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, Fredrick Brown, Robert Bloch, and I'm just getting started. I read constantly. As for the epic Western, that's Paradise Sky. — Joe R. Lansdale

For humans, the challenge is to unite soul and role, to discover the hidden wholeness that enables us to be in the world who we are in our souls, and to act in accordance with our deepest and truest natures. — Andrew Himes

Norris's politics fit well with the Klan because he had a holistic view of how race, religion, morality, and politics fit together. Commenting on an interracial marriage that took place at a church in New York, Norris said, "I can name to you a people south of the Mason-Dixon Line that if a Negro should take a white girl's hand in marriage that girl would be without a Negro husband before the sun arose the next morning." Furthermore, said Norris, he would gladly perform the funeral. [100] — Andrew Himes

The discussion of derivatives in the political world has become a zero sum game. — Jim Himes

Man cannot live without some knowledge of the purpose of life. If he can find no purpose in life he creates one in the inevitability of death. — Chester Himes

She held him at arms' length, looked at the pipe still gripped inn his hand, then looked at his face and read him like a book. She ran the tip of her red tongue slowly across her full cushiony, sensuous lips, making them wet-red and looked him straight in the eyes with her own glassy, speckled bedroom eyes.

The man drowned.

When he came up, he stared back, passion cocked, his whole black being on a live-wire edge. Ready! Solid ready to cut throats, crack skulls, dodge police, steal hearses, drink muddy water, live in a hollow log, and take any rape-fiend chance to be once more in the arms of his high-yellow heart. — Chester Himes

New England oysters are better than Chesapeake. But Chesapeake blue crabs are unbeatable. — Jim Himes

Gerald smiled down at her, and she relaxed, leaning on them both. "I'm glad I came in for a sandwich," Gerald whispered, and Royrick laughed, tossing back his head. — S.J. Himes

The opposition of fundamentalist preachers and leaders to the civil rights movement was deeply connected to their historic separatism. They believed in an inerrant Bible that had been inspired by God, and they also believed that God explicitly ordained the separation of the races. The claims of the civil rights marchers were an affront to their interpretation of the Bible, and not just to their racial beliefs. — Andrew Himes

It seemed so illogical to punish some poor criminal for doing something that civilization taught him how to do so he could have something that civilization taught him how to want. It seemed to him as wrong as if they had hung the gun that shot the man. — Chester Himes

Martyrs are needed to create incidents. Incidents are needed to create revolutions. Revolutions are needed to create progress. — Chester Himes

From my limited and immature child's point of view, Heaven was therefore populated almost exclusively by white people who lived in the United States of America, along with the original disciples of Jesus, an uncalculated number of genuine Christians who had lived throughout the ages, and many but not all of those mentioned in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which I first read at the age of eight when I found it on my parents' book shelf. — Andrew Himes

Why can't you?" he snapped as if on cue. "You're not fooling... — Elise Himes

I make a wicked clam chowdah, and linguine with clam sauce. Oysters I like to eat raw, and mussels in either a white wine sauce or in beer with paprika. — Jim Himes

Brian Turner writes as only a soldier can, of terror and compassion, hurt and horror, sympathy and desire. He takes us into the truth and trauma of the Iraq war in language that is precise, delicate and beautiful, even as it tells of a suicide bomber, a skull shattered by a bullet, a blade in a bloodgroove. — Andrew Himes

I would sit in my room and become hysterical about the wild incredible story I was writing. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference. — Chester Himes

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary. — Chester Himes

Western magical practitioners incorrectly call such a creature a demon, when I would describe it as a kidnapped inter-dimensional alien. — S.J. Himes

The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books. — Chester Himes