Be careful what you swallow. Chew!

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

Writing is a delicious agony.

at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.