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

It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.

We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured and carried off to this land. We smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth. We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite. We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.

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

All literature is protest.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].

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.