The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years

Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

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

Employment is my right my destiny.

The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.