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All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allow

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Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

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Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the m...more

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I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but th...more

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All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in., March 9, 1998]

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There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

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How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they d...more

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What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?

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Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

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Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schoo...more

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I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically und...more

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I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a w...more

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The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with whic...more

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All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschy...more

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All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.