“Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it.”

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.

I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].

And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true?

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.

Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.

We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.

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.

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.

I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak,

But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it

In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness.

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.

I know when it happens. I know it when it happens every time.

All I know is, if you listen to society, you’ll never get anywhere!

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one’s opinion but rather to know it.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

I Don’t Think There’s A Good Excuse For Being Unhappy. I’m Not Particularly Unhappy, But I Know What Pain Is. I think That Life Is Characterized By Pain.

I always knew ‘My Dawg’ would be a hit, but I didn’t even know what a hit was. When I made the song I knew it sounded hard.

I want to let them know they can have this much fun by doing something legal like me rapping for instance.