When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

No man is a devil in his own mind.

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.