Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.