When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

If you have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is to convince yourself that the person is subhuman. And won't mind the enslavement. The second thing you must do is convince your allies that the person is subhuman so that you have some support. But the third and the unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he, she, is not quite a first class citizen.

Just as hope rings through laughter, it can also shine through tears.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.