"The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him." — James Baldwin

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

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.