A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.

A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

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

But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.