Don't leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.

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.

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

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

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.

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

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