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

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

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.

All literature is protest.

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.

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.

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