The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

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

People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not- so grotesquely- resemble human beings.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.