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.

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

there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.

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

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.

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