It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.

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

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.

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

Be careful what you swallow. Chew!

First fight. Then fiddle.