Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.

there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!

I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.

Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.