I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em.

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

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

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

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.

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.

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.