European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

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.