Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad.
RICHARD WRIGHTOur too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad.
RICHARD WRIGHTIt would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.
RICHARD WRIGHTDon’t leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.
RICHARD WRIGHTYou usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.
RICHARD WRIGHTReluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.
RICHARD WRIGHTWe invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite.
RICHARD WRIGHTIf a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.
RICHARD WRIGHTHe had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer.
RICHARD WRIGHTI did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].
RICHARD WRIGHTWhenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHTI could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate.
RICHARD WRIGHTThey hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged.
RICHARD WRIGHTIt was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
RICHARD WRIGHTBut to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.
RICHARD WRIGHTThe artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.
RICHARD WRIGHTWe smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth.
RICHARD WRIGHT