But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target
Richard WrightIt would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.
Richard WrightIs not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn't it only the naive who find all of this baffling? If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?
Richard WrightAnything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.
Richard Wright