There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

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

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.