I maintain that I have been a Negro three times--a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!

I was born in a Negro town.

I been through living for years. I just ain't dead yet.

Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.

If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?