If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

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

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.

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.

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.

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.

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.