Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.

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

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

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

Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.

In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air.