“Every writer I had ever known wrote his best work when he had his back up against the wall and thought he would never write another word.”

No matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me.

I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it

The story’s what matters; spelling’s overrated.

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.

The miscegenation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white women.

Nobody wants to be in a room or their business to be funded because they’re a woman. They don’t want to be discriminated against because they’re a woman.

I’m fighting against becoming soft. That’s the worst thing you can say to a basketball player.

If you come to me and say, ‘Hey look I’m a racist,’ or ‘I discriminate against blacks,’ or ‘I don’t like you because you’re African American.

When you’re playing against a whole bunch of All-Stars, it’s like a video game. There’s so much talent on the floor at once.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned, was against me.