“What’s happening now is what happened before, and often what’s going to happen again sometime or other.”

Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don’t think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.

Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God’s plan. Everybody thinks that if they don’t get it, they’re some kind of odd man out. And it’s not true. Nobody gets justice – people just get good luck or bad luck.

A movie in production is the greatest train set a boy could ever have.

Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.

See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I’m profoundly convinced that that’s a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.

An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

Criticism is the essence of creation.

Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things.

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional – and I hate every kind of snob.

Now I’m an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.

A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.

This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.

This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.

This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.

An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.