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

Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.

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

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

But let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.