We can make America what America must become.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which were now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.