For the beloved should not allow me to turn my infantile fantasies into reality: On the contrary, he should help me to go beyond them.

I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.

I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another. That it be possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever he may be.

The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.

Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.

Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.

Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.