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

He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.

It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.

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.

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

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

I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.