No one knows very much about the life of another. This ignorance becomes vivid, if you love another. Love sets the imagination on fire, and, also, eventually, chars the imagination into a harder element: imagination cannot match love, cannot plunge so deep, or range so wide.

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.

The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

Great art can only be created out of love.