"I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands."

"It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. . . . We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual."

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

"When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous."