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

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.

All literature is protest.

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

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.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em.