It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

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

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

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.

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