Richard Wright

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”

“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”

“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself...”

“Maybe man is nothing in particular,' Cross said gropingly. 'Maybe that's the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of...”

“If you posses enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone.”

“If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.”

“I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].”

“The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.”

“Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.”

“Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons.”

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger f...”

“Don't leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.”