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

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

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

It 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.

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

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.