“Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”

No man is a devil in his own mind.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

Everybody’s journey is individual.

I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

Never be ashamed of expressing how you feel; being ashamed of emotional pain is as outlandish as being ashamed of shoulder pain. Your emotions are your truth; they are internal experiences that belong to you and no one has the right to criticize them.

Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

I don’t want to end up losing my soul.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right.

Thank those who gave you courage and thank those who laughed at your broken dreams.