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

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!

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.

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

The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.

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

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