I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That’s living.
Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.
We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil.
A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.
Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.
It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don’t do this or that.
It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.
Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!
I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.
My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.
He looked like the love thoughts of women.
Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.
I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.
My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.
You heard me. You ain’t blind.
Every tub sits on its bottom.
Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.
The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.
When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.