This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

If the word 'integration' means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.

I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And there is a level on which the mockery of people, even their hatred, is moving, because it is so blind: It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction.