And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

Employment is my right my destiny.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.