“Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn’t it only the naive who find all of this baffling?”

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.

But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.

there are times when life’s ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed

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.

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical.

If you’ve a notion of what man’s heart is, wouldn’t you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man’s frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?

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.

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets.

I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.

You 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.

I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate.

Don’t leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.

Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.

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.

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . .

I think Lady Gaga is great and is changing pop music and bringing back a certain rock ‘n’ roll spirit, swagger to the game.

We all [on Aladdin] have a passion to perform and a lot of us trained to do this and there’s a certain gratification from knowing that you did your best work and knowing that you are at the level that you are at.

I still follow that model: just go hard every day, and take it one step at a time.

You do not become a real pro in your field by doing certain things – you become a pro in your field by doing things in a certain way.

There are certain things women are better at than men.

There is a certain kind of pain that can change you. Even the strongest sword, when placed in a raging fire, will soften and bend and change its form..

If we are willing to act violently in pursuit of a peripheral interest, everyone can be certain that, when a vital interest is at stake, we will be still more violent.

I do think that has a certain subversiveness to it. Even if it’s not on a geopolitical level.