“Proximity to reality induces feelings of emptiness, horror and depression. Do not approach it alone.”

“We are not born with a need for knowledge, but a hunger for it. Eve bit the apple and it has been gluttony ever since.”

“It is said that the depressive has a clearer view of reality than does the euphoric. Perhaps, but the euphoric has a clearer view of life.”

“Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.”

“Those who jump out of airplanes do not love lifethey deny it, which, of course, is not done without a certain naughty exhilaration. Like children they relish tugging on the apron of Mother Nature, ...”

“Just because one is born in sin is no reason to brag about it.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to just...”

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ...”

“If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself. As the master, or as a member of the dominant...”

“The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvat...”

“Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned...Everything is war. Me say war.That until the're no longer 1st class and...”

“When youre sharing a foxhole with another man, you don't worry about what color he is, just whether or not he will protect your back”

“And Charles turned around and called back without thinking, 'You know, you're awfully lucky you boys are white.'He didn't know why he said it. It had broken out of him. He'd wanted to speak with lo...”