Laymon Quotes

This summer, it took one final conversation with Grandmama for me to understand that no one in our family and very few folk in this nation has any desire to reckon with the weight of where we've been. Which means no one in our family and very few folk in this nation wants to be free. ~ Kiese Laymon

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 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

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

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

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

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself. ~ 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

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

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

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

I will wonder if the memories that remain with age are heavier than the ones we forget because they mean more to us, or if our bodies, like our nation, eventually purge memories we never wanted to be true. ~ Kiese 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 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

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

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

I never heard the words, "sexual violence" or "violent sex" or "sexual abuse" from one family member, one teacher, or one preacher but my body knew sexual violence and violent sex were as wrong as anything police or white folk could do to us. ~ 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

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

The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other. ~ 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

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

I will not misdirect or manipulate human beings...especially those human beings who love me enough to risk being misdirected or manipulated. I will not misdirect or manipulate myself...I will not say I am sorry when I am resentful. I will not give my blessings away. I will love myself enough to be honest when I fail at loving. ~ Kiese Laymon

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

I learned you haven't read anything if you've only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader version of revision. ~ 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

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

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

Love is always right. ~ Richard 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

My principles wouldn't allow it. ~ 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

I knew, truth be told, that a present American man would likely teach me how to be a present American man. and I couldn't imagine how those teachings would have made me healthier or more generous. ~ 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

If white American entitlement meant anything, it meant that no matter how patronizing, unashamed, deliberate, unintentional, poor, rich, rural, urban, ignorant, and destructive white Americans could be, black Americans were still encouraged to work for them, write to them, listen to them, talk with them, run from them, emulate them, teach them, dodge them, and ultimately thank them for not being as fucked up as they could be. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back then I wanted all my seasons to be Mississippi seasons, no matter how strange, hot, or terrifying. Now I felt something else. I didn't want to float in, under, and around all the orange-red stars in our galaxy if our galaxy was Mississippi. I wanted to look at Mississippi from other stars and I didn't ever want to come home again. ~ Kiese Laymon

You took my paper smudged with tears and you read it out loud. You told me what worked in the essay, and what didn't work. You asked me questions about word choice, pacing, and something you called political symbolism. You asked me what I was really trying to say with the essay and suggested I start with saying exactly that. You challenged me to use the rest of the essay to discover ideas and questions I didn't already know and feel. "A good question anchored in real curiosity is much more important than a cliché or forced metaphor," you told me. ~ Kiese Laymon

I would learn fifteen years too late that asking for consent, granting consent, surviving sexual violence, being called a good dude, and never initiating sexual relationships did not incubate me from being emotionally abusive. Consent meant little to nothing if it was not fully informed. What, and to whom, were my partners consenting if I spent our entire relationship convincing them that a circle was not a circle but just a really relaxed square? I'd become good at losing weight and great at convincing women they didn't see or know what they absolutely saw and knew. Lying there on that floor, I accepted that I'd actually never been honest with myself about what carrying decades of lies did to other people's hearts and heads. ~ Kiese Laymon

I'd never imagined Layla being in one emergency, much less emergencies. Part of it was Layla was a black girl and I was taught by big boys that black girls would be okay no matter what we did to them. ~ Kiese Laymon

Do you ever just feel lonely? I feel like I walk around the world raw, Kie. It's hard to open up when you're already open, and people just never get tired of sticking their nasty hands into that raw. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last time Shalaya Crump and I really talked, she told me, "City, I could love you if you helped me change the future dot-dot-dot in a special way. ~ Kiese Laymon