The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process

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

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

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

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.