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A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.

Richard Wright

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Forget Learn Leaving might Some South Understand
Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Expression Individuality Oppressed Personal Strategy Violence
I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bloom Differently Drink Perhaps South Strange Transplant Warm Wind
I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak,
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bleak Environment Happen Made Thing Vbare
The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Author Book Closely Come Dark Emotion Fact Imagination Kind More Regard Think Writing Wrote
The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Gratitude Hour Like Live Made Peacefully Spirit Suffer Tender Violent
Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Arouse Believe Character Feeling Hostility Identification Right Something Wrong
Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Cities City Dusty Farm Folk Hard Land Pavement Street Thinking Upon
No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Able Blood Family Forget Long Matter No Spirit
I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Ache Another Awful Chance Committed Done Knowing Listen Some Undo Vaguely
We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Education Literature Medicine Own Religion Science System
I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].
RICHARD WRIGHT

Emotionally Factually Knows Stories True
I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Endure Feeling Hate Hunger Hurt Learn Live
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Book Environment Fail Support
We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Jail Living People Thing White
He 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 WRIGHT

Act Alone Assumption Been Blood Live Long Saw Suffering

A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.

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A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.

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Popular Authors

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