Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

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

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.