O. Henry Quotes

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.

Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology.

My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him.

My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.

Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

I didn't feel particularly close to my father.

I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.'

One must learn how to be black in America.

My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into meaning and meaning into belief.

Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement.

We must begin to understand the nature of intertextuality . . . the manner by which texts poems and novels respond to other texts. After all, all cats may be black at night, but not to other cats.

We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as noble and just as ignoble as anybody else.

The truth is I would do my job for free! I love it every day. If you can possibly choose a vocation that's an avocation, a job that's really a hobby, then you'll be way ahead of the game.

Without doubt, President [Barack] Obama is a great historical figure.

You should not pick an occupation because your think your parents want you to do it, or because you think it's the noble thing to do. You should only pick a job because it turns you on.

Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge was deciding which stories to tell.

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

Each individual has a responsibility to get out of bed, learn their ABCs, learn your math tables, not use race and racism as an excuse.

That's what I mean by being bilingual: comfortable in your skin, comfortable with all parts of who you are.

There is nothing finer in history than Thomas at Chickamauga.

Christmas time, we can remember with deep thanksgiving the amazing Christmas gift of God Himself, when God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Mankind in the gross is a gaping monster, that loves to be deceived and has seldom been disappointed.

Paradoxically, when females reject the male, they usurp the masculine role and abandon the feminine one.

We cannot experimentally map out the brain. Its just too big. In a piece of the brain the size of a pinhead there are 3,000 pathways like a city with 3,000 streets.

Avoid complexities. Make everything as simple as possible.

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact

We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles

Advice to persons about to marry - don't

The sordid qualities imputed to the enemy are always those which we recognize as our own and therefore rise to slay, because only through projection do we realize the enormity and horror of them.

The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.

We must be holy without holiness. We must be whole, complete. That's being holy. Any other kind of holiness is false, a snare, and a delusion.

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say 'amen.'

Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration.

You start out with the sublime and you end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.

Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.

Better to separate than never to marry.

Paint what you like and die happy

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

The piano bar is the gateway to the halls of masturbation.

The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.

I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.