I want to see how life can triumph.

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.

The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

Black art has always existed. It just hasn't been looked for in the right places.

Art is the soul of a people.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.

Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.

There is nothing quite like this novel with its rage and ragings, its discontent and angry restlessness. Wuthering Heights is a virgin's story.

The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.

Many large corporations are actually modeled on hell, ' Brother Frank added. 'The policies and organization are almost idential. Hell, of course, is much worse.

Hear, see, and be silent.

All communication begins with an intention, and your intention determines the quality of your life.

Just as women's rights are human rights, women's progress is human progress.

The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.

Never think that by releasing me you will be free. You would only condemn us to an ultimate hell on earth. You would only free something else to destroy us both.

San Francisco's winter is a season unto itself. Fleeting, rain-soaked, verdant, a brief period of shadows and renewal