The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

Writing is a political instrument.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.