Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

You cannot fix what you will not face.

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.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

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

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.

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