We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.

The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.

People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not- so grotesquely- resemble human beings.

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years

This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.