My Ishmael Quotes

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it. ~ Daniel Quinn

In Ishmael I articulated a living mythology that is so integral to our culture that it's never examined or even noticed by anyone. It's like the sound of blood rushing through your veins - you hear it so constantly that you don't hear it at all. ~ Daniel Quinn

Skepticism and cynicism, on the other hand, have been growing on me. For one thing, they serve me in repressing that hazardous state of hope. It's the most destructive of all human emotions. It keeps us in the places we are frightened by the most."

Almohammad, Asaad. An Ishmael of Syria (Kindle Locations 77-79). . Kindle Edition. ~ Asaad Almohammad

He had watched her, after all, mourn her husband's death and it had been for her in part the discovery that grief could attach itself with permanence - something Ishmael had already discovered. It attached itself and then it burrowed inside and made a nest and stayed. It ate whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it. ~ David Guterson

Poverty is worse than nightmares. You can wake up from nightmares. ~ Ishmael Beah

Have you ever seen people line up outside a Van Gogh exhibit? When they get inside there are so many they can't even see the paintings, they just pass by like sheep or like mourners passing the tomb of a fallen hero, a bier, with the same solemnity. And the extent of their knowledge concerning Van Gogh is that he "cut off his ear." Man, it's religion they make it into. ~ Ishmael Reed

WHEN ISHMAEL WOKE, the walls of his trench were seeping water and the dawn was colder than it should have been, the sky an unnatural and ubiquitous pale color that had less to do with the rising of the sun than the passing of the night. ~ James Lee Burke

To Ishmael, the whale's indefinite whiteness' shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation. [It's] a color-less, all-color of atheism from which we shrink. ~ Herman Melville

Constance L. Rice, co-director of the Los Angeles of the Advancement Project, told the Times that Seltzer might have been influenced by David Simon's fake ghetto series, "The Wire." It figures. Isn't this sexism? Isn't this a double standard? They're hard on this young woman for her fake ghetto book, yet praise these White guys for theirs. So there's a big market in downing Black men. ~ Ishmael Reed

We had not only lost our childhood in the war but our lives had been tainted by the same experiences that still caused us great pain and sadness. ~ Ishmael Beah

We all have that capacity to lose our humanity when circumstances force us to do so. It's not specific to people who live in Africa or Latin America or Asia. And equally, we are capable of regaining ourselves. ~ Ishmael Beah

It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don't be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child. ~ Ishmael Beah

caring about lives is not caring about your own life. it's all about giving your last breath for others to live. The caring man is like the last crab out of a bucket. letting others step on your back to get out, and letting you not step on others back and that is love. ~ Christian

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

A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality. ~ Ishmael Reed

The branches of the trees looked as if they were holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer. ~ Ishmael Beah

Hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story. ~ Ishmael Reed

As long as a man does not sin, he is feared. As soon as he sins, he himself is in fear. ~ Rabbi Ishmael

As God's child advances spiritually be shall discover that the Lord's time is as important as the Lord's will. Do not rashly beget an Ishmael lest he become the greatest enemy to Isaac. ~ Watchman Nee

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies. ~ Ishmael Reed

Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more ~ Ishmael Beah

I think there are fundamentalists all over the world. I think all religions have fundamentalists who have different interpretations of scriptures that are very vague. ~ Ishmael Reed

I was glad to see other faces and at the same time disappointed that the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people. ~ Ishmael Beah

We all knew that we could grieve only for a short while in order to continue staying alive. ~ Ishmael Beah

As for [Amiri] Baraka, he and I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy; he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship. ~ Ishmael Reed

Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. ~ Ishmael Beah

Whites have been the most subsidized group in the history of the United States and maybe the history of the world, while Blacks were enslaved and were the assets of Whites. ~ Ishmael Reed

You don't have to see it to love it. Just love it for it is good and that is love. ~ Christian Thogolith

Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans. ~ Ishmael Reed

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them. ~ Ishmael Beah

Fear stalks the land. (As usual; so what else is new?) ~ Ishmael Reed

Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk. ~ Ishmael Beah

We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often ... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. [S]he said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon. ~ Ishmael Beah

There's a saying in the oral tradition of storytelling that when you tell a story, when you give out a story, it is no longer yours; it belongs to everyone who encounters it and everyone who takes it in. ~ Ishmael Beah

All art must be for the end of liberating the masses. A landscape is only good when it shows the oppressor hanging from a tree. ~ Ishmael Reed

This was one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. ~ Ishmael Beah

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them. ~ Ishmael Reed

Ishmael was looking at him through narrowed eyes. "This is very important to you, this box."
"It's important to the world."
Ishmael said: "The sun rises, and the sun sets. Sometimes it rains. We live, then we die." He shrugged.
He would never understand, Wolff thought; but others would. ~ Ken Follett

Ishmael Beah was born and spent his childhood in Sierra Leone as that sad but beautiful West African country was ravaged by a civil war that left some 50,000 dead between 1991 and 2002. He was a child soldier for a while, then, through extraordinary circumstances, was set free of that life. ~ Carolyn See

We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food. ~ Ishmael Beah

We made it back to the airport without getting mugged, stoned, shot at, pounced on, bombed, shelled, garroted, gassed, pitched into, caught in a cross fire, sniped at, blockaded, napalmed, or trip-wired. No one even hit us with a water balloon. ~ Daniel Quinn

Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out. ~ Ishmael Reed

I wasn't part of any sixties movement. I'm skeptical of movements. I'm part of the times that I'm in. ~ Ishmael Reed

Sometimes a story does not make immediate sense - one has to listen and keep it in one's heart, in one's blood, until the day it will become useful. The ~ Ishmael Beah

61 lynchings occurred in 1920 alone. In 1921, 62, some of the victims, soldiers returning from the Great War who after fighting and winning significant victories - just as they had fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and the wars again the Indians - thought that America would repay them for the generosity of putting their lives on the line, for aiding in salvaging their hides from the Kaiser who had been tagged "enemy" this time. Instead, a Protestant country ignorant even of Western mysteries executes soldiers after a manner of punishments dealt to witches in the "Middle Ages." Europe and the Catholic Church are horrified but not surprised at this "tough guy" across the waters whose horrendous murders in Salem led Europe to reform its "witch laws. ~ Ishmael Reed

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;--all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooners, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood; all this was thrilling. ~ Ishmael

I don't know why people always compare me [ with Amiri Baraka] I was never part of the Black Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea when they were operating in Harlem. ~ Ishmael Reed

I learned that you are not free until you stop others from making you feel worthless. Because if you do not, you will eventually accept that you are worthless. ~ Ishmael Beah

Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month, begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will never attain.Roth is a petty bigot and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a buffoon to scholars the world over. ~ Ishmael Reed