People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently.

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

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be