I do not pray. . . . I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men. . . . Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility.

I love myself when I am laughing.

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

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.

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.