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

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.

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

It had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.

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.

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

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