Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.