There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves..

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and h….

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it..

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock..

Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves..

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive..

You cannot fix what you will not face..

Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betrayin….

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-dec….

He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him tha….

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now..

You write in order to change the world..

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others..

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after tha….

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you..

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out..

You took the best, so why not take the rest?.

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage..

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the res….

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to ….

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, t….