"

Write at the edges of the day.

"

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who yo...more

"

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

"

It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.

"

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, you...more

"

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there wa...more

"

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

"

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 D...more

"

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

"

It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shame...more

"

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.

"

Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping sna...more

"

Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

"

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.

"

...maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don't believe it and don't count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as...more