Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Chester Himes

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Chester Himes.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include If He Hollers Let Him Go, published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958 Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

American - Writer | July 29, 1909 - November 12, 1984

Source: Wikipedia

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

Chester 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

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

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

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

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

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

Martyrs are needed to create incidents. Incidents are needed to create revolutions. Revolutions are needed to create progress.

Chester Himes

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

Chester 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

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

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

Chester 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

Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Chester Himes

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