The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

We can make America what America must become.

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. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.