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Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

Richard Wright

I didn’t know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for ’em.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Alive Ems Enough Felt Kill Life Until
I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . .
RICHARD WRIGHT

Darling Leaving Myself Rain South Unknown Wind
We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Brass Bronze exchange Fashion Granite Made Medium Silver Utensil
The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Author Book Closely Come Dark Emotion Fact Imagination Kind More Regard Think Writing Wrote
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.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Arouse Believe Character Feeling Hostility Identification Right Something Wrong
We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Jail Living People Thing White
Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Goddamnit Jail Life White
And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Blind Force Know Pawn Play Powerless Social
They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Being Deepest Fear Feeling Hate Live Play
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.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Age Aread Attitude Endure Everything Life Living Others Peaceful Spekticle Suffering Twelve
Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Dead Know might Something Southern Switch Track Wrong
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.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Ache Another Awful Chance Committed Done Knowing Listen Some Undo Vaguely
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?
RICHARD WRIGHT

Certain Civilization Exactly Heart Life Men Ought Sense
I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Endure Feeling Hate Hunger Hurt Learn Live
The locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Ait Blink Collision Down Fill Heading Heedless Red Rush Scream Steep
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?
RICHARD WRIGHT

Attempt Civilization Earth Effort Frantic Frightened Notion Say

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

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Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

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Popular Authors

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