The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

The relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others in order to end the racial nightmare and acheive our country.

In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.

It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

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

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.