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.

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.

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

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

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

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.