Laymon Quotes & Sayings

Really, we're fighting because she raised me to never forget I was born on parole, which means no black hoodies in wrong neighborhoods, no jogging at night, hands in plain sight at all times in public, no intimate relationships with white women, never driving over the speed limit or doing those rolling stops at stop signs, always speaking the King's English in the presence of white folks, never being outperformed in school or in public by white students, and, most importantly, always remembering that no matter what, the worst of white folks will do anything to get you. — Kiese Laymon

Now you got us whammied with the curse of squirmy death. — Richard Laymon

When you get saved, act like you got some sense. You hear me? Whole lotta folks get saved and it take them an entire life before they start living by God's word. That's them ol' deathbed conversioners, them ol' heathens trying to get to heaven a lifetime too late. — Kiese Laymon

I'm interested in how the confessional is so abrasively critiqued today. I'm not really comfortable with simply confessing but I do think "confessing" is a major part of reckoning. — Kiese Laymon

But i am a black man whose black mama's body and spirit were terrorized by another black man's hands and words. Sexism and patriarchy are not part of the revolution. I am a gender-maneuvering gay black man whose spirit was terrorized by other straight black men. Hetero-sexism and heteronormativity are not a part of our revolution. I am a black man who has ignored the plights of so many of my brothers. Separation because of difference and elitism based on class is not a part of the revolution. — Kiese Laymon

Muttering, "Fuck it," he threw his finger away. It hit the wall. He heard the quiet thunk through the sounds of helicopters. Must — Richard Laymon

I don't worry much about whether or not one of my stories contains elements of the supernatural. If I come up with what I think is a nifty concept, I'll give it a whirl. — Richard Laymon

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause. — Kiese Laymon

I lie in a bathtub of cold water, still sweating and singing love songs to myself. I put the gun to my head and cock it.
I think of my Grandma and remember that old feeling of being so in love that nothing matters except seeing and being seen by her. I drop the gun to my chest. I'm so sad and I can't really see a way out of what I'm feeling but I'm leaning on memory for help. Faster. Slower. I think I want to hurt myself more than I'm already hurting. I'm not the smartest boy in the world by a long shot, but even in my funk I know that easy remedies like eating your way out of sad, or fucking your way out of sad, or lying your way out of sad, or slanging your way out of sad, or robbing your way out of sad, or gambling your way out of sad, or shooting your way out of sad, are just slower, more acceptable ways for desperate folks, and especially paroled black boys in our country, to kill ourselves and others close to us in America. — Kiese Laymon

I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways. — Kiese Laymon

Wielding a hammer, however, you're at the very heart of the experience, being flooded with wonderful sensations that simply can't be yours if you use a firearm. Now, you might be asking yourself how I came to discover the splendors of hammer attack. I'll tell you. You won't want to hear it, though. — Richard Laymon

the remnants of her Georgia drawl always sounded a bit sad. She made him think of an aging Scarlett O'Hara torn from Tara's halls but clinging to her pride and, with the help of a beauty parlor, her flaming hair. — Richard Laymon

My eyes are brown. So are my teeth.
Just kidding about the teeth. — Richard Laymon

Success is contagious when you surround yourself with people who refuse to let you down. — Kevin Laymon

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable. — Kiese Laymon

I took out my brush and got to brushing the waves on the back of my head. — Kiese Laymon

Yet, if I were to adhere to my mom's advice, I would have had to drop out of school years ago (since a lot of folks in our inequitable education system refuse to love us), quit engaging public health offices (because I walked in as a human in need of medical services and walked out as a patient whose subjective world was mad invisible by research lingo: "MSM," otherwise known as "men who have sex with men'), sleep in my bed all damn day (knowing it is more likely that I would be stopped by police when walking to the store in Camden or Bed-Stuy while rocking a fitted cap and carrying books than my white male neighbors would be while walking around in ski masks in the middle of summer and dropping a dime bag on the ground in front of a walking police and his dog)... — Kiese Laymon

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers have paid more than their fair share, and our nation owes them and their children, and their children's children, a lifetime of healthy choices and second chances. That would be responsible. — Kiese Laymon

They are not American super-women, but they are the best of Americans. They have remained responsible, critical, and loving in the face of servitude, sexual assault, segregation, poverty, and psychological violence. They have done this hard, messy work because they were committed to life and justice, and so we all might live more responsibly tomorrow. — Kiese Laymon

That sort of aloneness gives you goosebumps scurrying up your spine. It makes your scalp crawl. — Richard Laymon

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages. — Kiese Laymon

A few of my books, over the years, have been optioned for film. The subject matter of my books, however, is not exactly conducive to Hollywood film treatment. If and when a 'big-budget' film is ever made based on one of my books, my fans and I will more than likely loathe it because it won't be true to its source. That's almost a given. — Richard Laymon

Obama will win. We will win. Then we will continue to lose. And the right questions will never be honestly asked or answered, and it's all just too much. — Kiese Laymon

Your heart was good but you forgot to guard it. You killed yourself slowly because of this. The heart is the true measure of a man or woman. I loved you and I know that you knew I loved you. We all have addictions. Some are just more obvious to the eye. We are all dying, but we are all living. — Kiese Laymon

The "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others" essay was so hard to write because of the memories, the sensory stuff, but also because it didn't follow the form of any essay that I've ever read. And the truth that I was exploring necessitated that obliteration of traditional form, I think. — Kiese Laymon

I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page. — Kiese Laymon

The man of courage is not the man who did not face adversity. The man of courage is the man who faced adversity and spoke to it. The man of courage tells adversity, "You're trespassing and I give you no authority to steal my joy, my faith or my hope. — Kiese Laymon

No book, no matter how good, has a chance of reaching a large audience unless the publisher SEES the book's value. — Richard Laymon

And he pictured her down below, turning slowly in the currents, her skin pale blue in the cold rays of sunlight slanting down through the water, her hair flowing lazily around her face. — Richard Laymon

In my vast experience, I've found it always wiser to go along with female advice ... First, you make them happy by doing what they tell you. That's the main thing. Let them think they're in control. They love it. Then, if it turns out they were right, everything's cool. If it turns out they were wrong ... then you have the pleasure of basking in the glow of superiority. — Richard Laymon

My feeling about fiction, regardless of the genre, is that it is meant to be a representation of life. I want my books to give a whole spectrum of experiences to my readers. Not just fear or terror or revulsion, but excitement, laughter, pain, sorrow, desire, etc. — Richard Laymon

I'm guessing you're tits deep in a horror novel. Something by Laymon, or Ketchum, or one of those sick fucks you read. — Kyle M. Scott

The worst of me wants credit for intending to do right by Jermaine, and has no intentions of disrupting my life for the needs of a cousin I always looked up to. — Kiese Laymon

Your letter reminds me that any love that necessitates deception is not love. It doesn't matter if that supposed love is institutional or personal. — Kiese Laymon

I write two hours in the morning and two hours before bed no matter. No matter what. I also write during the day if I have to get something down, but the four hours a day is the one thing in my life I don't fool with. — Kiese Laymon

People always say change takes time. It's true, but really it's people who change people, and then those people have to decide if they really want to stay the new people that they're changed into. — Kiese Laymon

I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach. — Kiese Laymon

Her oceans were as toxic as the race of men who dwelled on her surface and called the blue planet home. — Kevin Laymon

Window. All the ruckus, of course, woke up everyone in the house. Lilly's room was right up there. She — Richard Laymon

In a sense, all fiction is experimental. Every new book is an adventure into unknown territory. As Hemingway told us, you (the writer) have to go out beyond where you have gone before. — Richard Laymon

My principles wouldn't allow it. — Richard Laymon

Mama's antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom, but to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain't no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival. — Kiese Laymon

If God needs to condemn anything to hell, it ought to be the idea of social death. Every day we commit an act of revolution, an act of treason, against a system that was never meant to guarantee our survival. — Kiese Laymon

In essay writing, I'm trying to push the form of expository writing. I'm trying to remember, trying to reckon, trying to find connections with the world, the nation and me, but I'm always trying to push the form, too, without being too obvious that I'm trying to push the form. — Kiese Laymon

Not so deep down, we all know that safety is an illusion, that only character melds us together. That's why most of us do everything we can (healthy and unhealthy) to ward off that real feeling of standing alone so close to the edge of the world. — Kiese Laymon

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue. — Kiese Laymon

First of all, the novel should be a critique of the novels that have come before it in a language that broadens the audience of American literature. Second, it's really got to be invested in a number of what-if questions. — Kiese Laymon

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself. — Kiese Laymon

I wanted to create a book that was unafraid of black bodies, yet super interested in thinking about the relationship of love to body and sexuality without relying on tired understandings of "gay" "bi" or "straight." — Kiese Laymon

In her own way, she was as compassionate and thoughtful as a girl could be, but her mind was stronger than yours and no one could ever really break her heart. You could sprain her heart, and her heart would bruise a lot, but it could never ever be broken. Never. I figured that there were probably 27 people like that in the world at one time and they were the only people who should be running for president of anything that mattered. — Kiese Laymon

Next week we have a bunch of horror writers coming from all over the world. That'll be one whole week, fully catered, and pre-paid bar. Those horror writers drink like fshes. Just their beer bill's gonna pay for the upkeep of this place for six months. Motel business is a great business to be in, my boy. — Richard Laymon

We black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us. Take away all those stolen West African girls and boys forced to find an oral culture to express, resist, and signify in the South, and we have no rich American idiom. — Kiese Laymon

Horror writers are specialists in the worst-case scenario. — Richard Laymon

Ray Garton never fails to go for the throat! — Richard Laymon

I hope this piece of work occupies your mind and impacts your outlook on life for years to come. I seek to inspire you to do great things. The power of the mind is extraordinary and you are capable of anything. — Kevin Laymon

I'm not good enough as a person and definitely not good enough as a writer. — Kiese Laymon

But the Bible was better than those other spinach-colored Classic books that spent most of their time flossing with long sentences about pastures and fake sunsets and white dudes named Spencer. I didn't hate on spinach, fake sunsets, or white dudes named Spencer, but you could just tell that whoever wrote the sentences in those books never imagined they'd be read by Grandma, Uncle Relle, LaVander Peeler, my cousins, or anyone I'd ever met. — Kiese Laymon

The earth is a far a better place, now that she's beneath it. — Richard Laymon

Killing, resurrecting, living with a zombie. Even if she could accept all that, — Richard Laymon

Daddy binders, bruh?
Obama: Governor Romney loves him some binders, doesn't he. — Kiese Laymon

In late 2001, I contributed a short story called 'Castaways' to an anthology called 'In Laymon's Terms,' which was a tribute to Richard Laymon, who had passed away earlier that year. — Brian Keene

One of the problems with a lot of "confessional" writing is that it starts and stops with the confessional and doesn't really tie the "I" into a "we" at all. I'm still surprised at how mad critics get at that kind of confessional writing. — Kiese Laymon

I'm also, than anything else, a teacher and a student. And without the four hours, I'm pretty monsterish. For real. — Kiese Laymon

Bring a vampire around, people start discovering religion. — Richard Laymon

Just call me the Boswell of the Krull Gang. — Richard Laymon

It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them the whole long boring story of how he'd gotten it at an estate sale in Hollywood. Some bimbo actress from the silent-screen days had supposedly slit her wrists while she was in the thing. 'Cashed in her chips,' Harold liked to say. 'In this very tub. — Richard Laymon

Gonna get me one of them Jeep Cherokees with the four-wheel drive, and go all over the whole country in it. — Richard Laymon

It's been my experience that worse-case scenarios are very rare indeed. Rare to the extend that you can almost count on them not happening. — Richard Laymon

Love is always right. — Richard Laymon

4. If you push yourself hard in the direction of freedom, compassion, and excellence, you will recover.
True/False — Kiese Laymon

This writing thing, it ain't like that hip hop shit, City. For li'l niggas like you," he told me, "this writing thing is like a gotdamn porta potty. It's one li'l nigga at a time, shitting in the toilet, funking up the little space he get. And you shit a regular shit or a classic shit. Either way," he said. "City, you gotta shit classic, then get your black ass on off the pot." He actually grabbed my hand. "You probably think I'm hyping you just for the money. It ain't just about the money. It's really not. It's about doing whatever it takes for you to have your voice heard. So I don't know what you're writing in that book you always carrying around, but it better be classic because you ain't gonna get no two times to get it right, you hear me? — Kiese Laymon

Except I think it feels more like an empty stomach than a broken heart. An aching hollowness that food can't cure. You know. You've felt it yourself, I bet. You hurt all the time, you're restless, you can't think straight, you sort of wish you were dead but what you really want is for everything to be the same as it was when you were still with her.. or him — Richard Laymon

Black children need waves of present, multifaceted love, not simply present fathers. — Kiese Laymon

A coward dies many times. A brave man never tastes of death but once. — Richard Laymon

I guess they're having what you might call panic attacks. It's an old place and smells a little musty. The hallways are sort of long and narrow. The exhibits are gory. The people are listening to some creepy, nasty stuff on their earphones. It apparently just overwhelms some of them, especially on a busy day when there might be some congestion in the rooms and hallways. You'll have flippers, fainters and barfers every so often.'
'It's sounding more fun all the time.' 'Not as much fun as the heart attacks.' 'You get heart attacks?'
'I don't, they do. Not often, though. — Richard Laymon