A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.

What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn't see Negroes hanging from its branches.

...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.

In order to weep, I had descended to the realm of the dead themselves, to their secret chambers, led by the invisible but soft hands of birds down stairways which were folded up again as I advanced. I displayed my grief in the friendly fields of death, far from men: within myself.

I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.

I decided to be what crime made of me.