The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.

I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.

When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.

If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads.

The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.

In America, black is a country.

Atheist Jews double crossers stole our [black people’s] secrets. . . . They give us to worship a dead Jew and not ourselves . . . . Selling fried potatoes and people, the little arty bastards talking arithmetic they sucked from the arab’s head.