Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of "chosen-ness" and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself