A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.