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

Richard Wright

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . .
RICHARD WRIGHT

Darling Leaving Myself Rain South Unknown Wind
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
We smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Basket Cloth Cotton Dance Folk Glass Iron Music Poem Smelted Spun Wool Work
You usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.
RICHARD WRIGHT

City Grant History Pavement Seem Stranger Suspect Take Think
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Book Environment Fail Support
Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Account Book Conclusion Life Reluctantly
The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Gratitude Hour Like Live Made Peacefully Spirit Suffer Tender Violent
It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Abiding Anyone Book Derive Impossible Less Novel Support Told
Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!
RICHARD WRIGHT

Half Halfway House Inside Make Mind Small
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
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
I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bloom Differently Drink Perhaps South Strange Transplant Warm Wind
The holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Evil Fact Frightened High History Holy Necessity Process White
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
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

Expression Individuality Oppressed Personal Strategy Violence
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Integrity Men Realization Self Strive

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

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

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