Richard Wright Quotes

A writer who hasn't written anything worth-while is a most doubtful person.

America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of bl...

As long as he could remember, he had never been responsible to anyone. The moment a situation became so that it exacted something of him, he rebelled. That was the way he lived; he passed his days try...

But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against the wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He commi...

Cross felt that at the heart of all political movements the concept of the basic inequality of man was enthroned and practiced, and the skill of politicians consisted in how cleverly they hid this ele...

Did you ever feel happy in church? Naw. I didn’t want to. Nobody but poor folks get happy in church. But you are poor, Bigger.Again Bigger’s eyes lit with a bitter and feverish pride. I ain’t that poo...

Even the cat smilesWhen the hen swallows waterWith back-tilted head.

Even though Mr. Dalton gave millions of dollars for Negro education, he would rent houses to Negroes only in this prescribed area, this corner of the city tumbling down from rot. In a sullen way Bigge...

From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had...

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

He sat. The white cat still contemplated him with large, moist eyes.

He wanted suddenly to stand up and shout, telling them that he had killed a rich white girl, a girl whose family was known to all of them. Yes; if he did that a look of startled horror would come over...

How could one find out about life when one was about to die?

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

I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth. Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution.If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break up...

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.

If laying down my life could stop the suffering in the world I'd do it. But I don't believe anything can stop it.

My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the...

A dread of white people now came to live permanently in my feelings and imagination. As the war drew to a close, racial conflict flared over the entire South, and though I did not witness any of it, I...