The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.

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

Is 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?

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.

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

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

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