men cannot be free in a nation where women are forbidden freedom.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

The rich are always afraid.

Too many escape into complexity these days. For it is an escape for persons to cry, when this question of the equality of peoples is raised in India or in our own South, 'Ah, but the situation is not so simple.' ... no great stride forward is ever made for the individual or for the human race unless the complex situation is reduced to one simple question and its simple answer.

Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction

A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.