He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
What kind of friendship have you had?Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?
This was not the man they had known, but they had scarcely expected to be confronted with ; this was, in a sense deeper than questions of fact, the man they had not known, and the man they had not kno...
Therefore, whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
There is nothing more boring, anyway, than sexual activity as an end in itself, and a great many people who came out of the closet should reconsider.
There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is th...
There is a blood-red thunder all around you, a blinding light flashes from time to time, voices roar and cease, roar and cease, you are in the grip of an unknowable agony, it is in your shoulders, you...
There are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
The world had prepared no place for you, and if the world had its way, no place would ever exist. Now, this is true for everyone, but, in the case of a Negro, this truth is absolutely naked: if he del...
The structure of the American commonwealth has trapped both these minorities into attitudes of perpetual hostility. They do not dare trust each other—the Jew because he feels he must climb higher on t...
The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them--could not forgive.
The sea, especially in its moments of fury, demands first your attention, then your endurance, and finally your patience and acceptance. If you lack this capacity, the sea will soon find you out and m...
The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and...
The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet: The clouds that gather round the setting sun 19 Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race ha...
The energy that was buried with the rise of the Christian nations must come back into the world; nothing can prevent it. Many of us, I think, both long to see this happen and are terrified of it, for...
The colors on the river faded, the rain began, and the river began to rise. It was apparent that the sun would soon give up the tremendous struggle it cost her to get to Paris for a few hours every da...
The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it.
The breathing instruments inspire, Wake into voice each silent string, And sweep the sounding lyre! In a sadly pleasing strain, 2 Let the warbling lute complain: Let the loud trumpet sound, Till the r...
The body in the mirror forces me to turn and face it. And I look at my body, which is under sentence of death. It is lean, hard, and cold, the incarnation of a mystery. And I do not know what moves in...