“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.

My hole is warm and full of light.

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

The truth is the light and the light is the truth.

Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.

Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.

Poor white people and poor black people just don’t know how much they have in common. Rich people don’t give a damn about either group.

If you’re black in this country, if you’re a woman in this country, if you are any minority in this country at all, what could possibly possess you to vote Republican?

Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we’re never going to be successful not because of you white people but because of other black people.

Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.

Being black or white isn’t an accomplishment. What you do with your life – or what you accomplish with your life – dictates what you should be proud of.

I just wish all these young black kids would realize how significant it is to stop acting a fool out there, killing each other, not getting their education. You know, people have died to put us in a situation to be successful.

You know it’s going to hell when the best rapper out there is white and the best golfer is black.

I am black or white, I’ll never be grey in my life.