If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.