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

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.