It is perfectly monstrous, ' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Who knows the secrets of anybody’s heart.

If you have not often felt the joy of doing a kind act you have neglected much and most of all yourself.

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were felt by the whole human race, there would not be one cheerful face left on earth.

Of course, the '60s was a study in decadence. Everything just got worse and worse, and at the end of the '60s, everything was so horrible that people were killing each other.

That liberty is a great thing we may know from our own feelings, and we may likewise judge so from the conduct of the white-people, in the late war.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city... But there is one thing about it. Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

nothing is as conventional as adolescence.

Everything you know, all the things that you thought were important, drift into the background. And even things that were important really come to the fore and he's one of them.

You can talk about what you see from the outside; it's hard to tell me who I am when you're just looking at me with a football uniform on. That's a totally different person. That's my job, that's it.

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.