Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and … - John Edgar Wideman

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I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.

John Edgar Wideman

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers. That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is. There is no American or Frenchhistory. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

Distance, Dream, Dreamers, Fight, Fighting, Thoughts

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Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.

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That split is inside all Americans. There are contradictions inside all of us about color and race. We've learned to cover them up and live with them and pretend that deep cleavage is not there. We all bear that illness.

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As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.

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A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

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When it's played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams.

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