And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.

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.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.

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.

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.