The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.