What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.

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

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.

We've got to show that blacks and whites are treated equally in the army. Otherwise, what's the point of waging war on Hitler?

The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.