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

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.

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

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

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

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