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

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

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.

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.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.