It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

The relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others in order to end the racial nightmare and acheive our country.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.