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

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

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . . I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

All literature is protest.

I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.