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Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

Richard Wright

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.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Anything Beyond Breath Denied Else Feel Hunger New
I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . .
RICHARD WRIGHT

Darling Leaving Myself Rain South Unknown Wind
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
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
Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Goddamnit Jail Life White
What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true?
RICHARD WRIGHT

Barest Coming Dream Justice Pososblity Thinking True
It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Affect Being Believe Different Disbelieve Feeling Matter New Something
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
I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak,
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bleak Environment Happen Made Thing Vbare
The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Art Artist Halloween Imagination Monster
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
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Always Elbow Hunger Less More Night Pray Up Wake
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
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Book Environment Fail Support
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
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
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
No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Able Blood Family Forget Long Matter No Spirit
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Book Clinched Environment Fail Nourish Support
I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Aspiration Black Country Limited Live People Redeem Something Somewhere
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
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Dope Drug Love Reading
It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness
RICHARD WRIGHT

Conscience Damm Drape Easy Hug Righteousness Salvie Self
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
All literature is protest.
RICHARD WRIGHT

All Literature Protest
A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Could Death Emotion Mode Must Penalty Place Sad Said Way
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

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

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Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

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Popular Authors

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