All art is a kind of confession.

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

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.