Why am I going home? he asked himself. But he knew why. It was time. In order not to lose all that he had gained, he had to move forward and risk it all.
Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That
White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way. But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded - at least, in the same way...
White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be...
White Americans have contented themselves with gestures that are now described as tokenism.
What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the jobless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendsh...
Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be a...
We stared at each other across a narrow space that was full of danger, that almost seemed to roar, like flame.‘Come,’ he said.
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the
Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happ...
Thursday’s great event was Aimé Cesaire’s speech in the afternoon, dealing with the relation between colonization and culture.
This was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me, nothing would ever be real for me again – unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality…
This war between the Southern cities and states is of the utmost importance, not only for the South, but for the nation. The Southern states are still very largely governed by people whose political l...
This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of living is not real. ... this laughter is universal and never can be st...
They are two sides of the same coin and the South will not change—cannot change—until the North changes. The country will not change until it re-examines itself and discovers what it really means by f...
They are just dirty, all of them, low and cheap and dirty.' He stretched out his hand and pulled me down to the floor beside him. 'All except you. Tous, sauf toi.' He held my face between his hands an...
There are tears on his face, his face or mine, I don't know. I kiss him where our tears fall. I start to say something. He puts one finger on my lips. He smiles his little smile.
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain. You ought to have some apprehension that th...
The writer trapped among a speechless people is in danger of becoming speechless himself. For then he has no mirror, no corroborations of his essential reality; and this means that he has no grasp of...
The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same.