"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."

Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn't like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.

He told us that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.

I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.