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

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!

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

We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured and carried off to this land. We smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth. We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite. We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.