I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only be setting someone free.
The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.
It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.
I don’t know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once – I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.
Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.