"The world is before you, and you need not take it, or suffer it, for what it is. You can also make it what it will be."

"The American ideal, after all, is to be so rich that you don't have to deal with anybody."

"You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't, you won't live long."

"The people who hurt you are not better than you. They are just luckier."

"It is a fact that I am a writer. It is not a fact that I am a Negro writer."