American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

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.

A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

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.