If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

But, when the chips are down, its better to be furious with someone you love, or frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.