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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.