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.

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

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].

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

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . . I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

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