I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.

I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.