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.

This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.

I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.