It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce h...
It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.
In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that...
In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this...
If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.
If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his fing...
I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?
I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father's brother died. And it broug...
I remember what it was...to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting-everything- was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.
I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.
He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descent became more rapid, and thinking: I can climb back up. If it’s wrong, I ca...
Each generation has shouted behind him, Nigger! as he walked our streets; it is he whom we would rather our sisters did not marry; he is banished into the vast and wailing outer darkness whenever we s...
Don’t think I don’t know you love me. You believe we going to make it?
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached—it was this last fact which was our undoing for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than...
And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the very young inevitability undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him. And the very harshness of this judgement, which broke my hea...
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid the state of being alone.
There was about his elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that made his soul uneasy.
Social affairs are not generally speaking the writer’s prime concern, whether they ought to be or not; it is absolutely necessary that he establish between himself and these affairs a distance which w...