“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.”

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The impossible is the least that one can demand.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.

Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.

It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

Some lose all mind and become soul, insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual – some lose both and become accepted.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

If I can give you one strong piece of advice, when you go away for that romantic weekend, whatever you do, do not accept or take the upgrade to the honeymoon suite.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

It’s easier to accept the fact that you’re just not good enough. We all have a lot more than we think we have.

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.