Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"