Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

I dream a world... where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!