Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

Hypocrisy/hi pakrise/ noun1. The moment you tell someone it is not important to be right, in order to look right to everyone else.

I am convinced now that virtually every destructive behavior and addiction I battled off and on for years was rooted in my (well-earned) insecurity.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Radar, of course, is what cellphone radiation is exactly like. It can be a similar frequency, it's just much weaker power.

We must do that which we think we cannot.

Real Buddhism is about meditation.

Running allows me to set my mind free. Nothing seems impossible, nothing unattainable.

‎"Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing; I find the reality thrilling.

Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul.