To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.