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.

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.

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.