When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

The relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others in order to end the racial nightmare and acheive our country.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.