It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.