I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

TeachingOne hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.

Briar: "So I guess I was the last to know." Rosethorn: "Of course you are. You're a man, aren't you?

Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.

No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.

God and a soldier all .people adore In time of war but not before And when war is over and all things are righted God is neglected and an old soldier slighted.

To become a painter or a sculptor or a graphic designer is quite an isolated way to spend your life.

It is superfluous to be humble on one's own behalf; so many people are willing to do it for one.

When I was 13, I told my parents I didn't believe in God any more. Religion should not be about determining women's freedoms.

We don't need you as an ally. We're Dauntless. -Tori

For nine years I worked to change what was hairdressing then into a geometric art form with color, perm without setting which had never been done before.