Top Kiese Laymon Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Kiese Laymon Biography

Kiese Laymon is an American writer, editor and a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. Author of Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Laymon's work deals with American racism, feminism, family, masculinity, geography, Hip-hop and Southern black life. His provocations, essays, and other works of short fiction appear on his blog, Cold Drank, as well as featured pieces written by guest contributors. Laymon has written essays and stories for numerous online publications, including his work as a contributing editor at Gawker and frequent posts to ESPN.com.

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Kiese Laymon Quotes

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

Black, Vice, Vices, Virtue

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

And Love, Loves, Needs, Writer, Writing

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.

Hours, Morning, Thing, Two, Writing

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. "

Book, Gay, Relationship, Super, Tired, Unafraid

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

Black, Mississippi, Writer

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

American, Character, Honesty, Wish, Writing

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.

Writing, Always Trying, Connections, Remember, Push

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.

Audience, Invested, Literature, Number, Numbers, What If

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

Book, Thinking, Long, Think, Pages, Afrosurrealist

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.

Critics, Mad, Problems, Stops, Ties, Writing

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.

Character, Healthy, Melds, Real, Safety, Unhealthy

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.

Comfortable, Interested, Reckoning, Think, Thinking, Today

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

Definitely, Enough, Good, Good Enough, Not Good Enough, Person

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.

Exploring, Memories, Necessitated, Stuff, Thinking, Writing

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.

Accountable, American, Emo, Keeps, People, Writing

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

Four, Monsterish, Real, Student, Teacher

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.

Inspiration, Push, Reader, Reading, Real, Sense