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

He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.

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.

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

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!