You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.

I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.