Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.

The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody toassociate with me who does not wish me near them?

To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat.

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.

There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.