We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse.

It is a measure of the Negro's circumstance that, in America, the smallest things usually take him so very long, and that, by the time he wins them, they are no longer little things: they are miracles.

A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.

The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost.

The fates have a way of demanding of a man that he suffer his greatest moments all by himself; being lone seems as often attendant upon reality as being in company is attendant upon the flight from reality.

The beauty of a strong, lasting commitment is often best understood by a man incapable of it.

It is not the least of a martyr's scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him.