I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

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

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.