It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.