Quotes by Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes

All memory is fiction.

Fiction

Memories

As you may know, my motto is: “All memory is fiction.” It could just as easily be: “All fiction is memory.” Unpacked, these two statements defy the ease of logic, but offer some really important truths about narrative art, at the very least, and about memory. So I would say that all art is personal.

Art

Memories

Two

For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae’s capacity to be a folk music that is created in a wholly modern context of the recording studio (and sometimes that is the sole performance space) is riddled with the kinds of contradictory impulses that we have come to expect from the post-modern. I revel in this, for it gives me, shall I say, permission.

Giving

Simple

Space

HIV is no respecter of persons. Any of us could find ourselves with the disease, and then what? We tend to stigmatize as a way to deceive ourselves about our invincibility. But it is a delusion.

Disease

Hiv

Way

I am a black person. I come out of an experience of exile and migration. I have always felt myself to be at once at home and away from home at the same time. It is inevitable that my perspective will be international.

Black

Home

Perspective

I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from.

Doe

People

Trying

I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal.

Believe

Fiction

Writing

I believe that many lives around us now can reflect this strange pattern of migration and movement. The question is: are we aware of it, and do we embrace it as a kind of birthright? I do. And yet, I feel deeply connected to at least two homespaces – Jamaica and Ghana, and more recently, South Carolina.

Believe

Ghana

Jamaica

I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina’s governor awarded me the highest award for the arts in the state. I was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. I have lived and worked among the folks in Sumter, South Carolina, for so many years. South Carolina has been home, and to be honest, it was easier for me to define myself as a South Carolinian than even as an American.

Art

Children

Meaningful

I think that the kinds of stereotypes that people have about Haitians or about HIV sufferers exist because we don’t realize that these are our brothers, our sisters, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors. They are us. And I don’t mean that in some metaphorical sense. They are literally us.

Brother

Mean

Uncles

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

America

Art

Artist

Believe

Black

Blessing

Book

Brother

Can Do

Children

Collective Memory

Concern

Crafts

Disease

Doe

Fiction

Ghana

Giving

Goal

Grace

Hiv

Home

Imagination

Jamaica

Justice

Library

Life Is

Mean

Meaningful

Memories

People

Perspective

Play

Poet

Prayer

Projects

Publish

Racist

Responsibility

Self

Significant

Simple

Song

Space

Speak

Stars

Suffering

Thinking

Today

Trying

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes

All memory is fiction.

HIV is no respecter of persons. Any of us could find ourselves with the disease, and then what? We tend to stigmatize as a way to deceive ourselves about our invincibility. But it is a delusion.

I am a black person. I come out of an experience of exile and migration. I have always felt myself to be at once at home and away from home at the same time. It is inevitable that my perspective will be international.

I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from.

I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal.

I think that the kinds of stereotypes that people have about Haitians or about HIV sufferers exist because we don’t realize that these are our brothers, our sisters, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors. They are us. And I don’t mean that in some metaphorical sense. They are literally us.

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Topics by Kwame Dawes

Popular Tools

The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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