“...it was no longer a matter of whether I would steal or lie or murder; it was a simple, urgent matter of public pride, a matter of how much I had in common with other people.” — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“My days and nights were one long, quiet, continuously contained dream of teror, tension, and anxiety. I wondered how long I could bear it.” — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“Having been thrust out of the world because of my race, I had accepted my destiny by not being curious about what shaped it” — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days. — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“Color hate defined the place of black life as below that of white life; and the black man, responding to the same dreams as… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“These fantasies were no longer a reflection of my reaction to the white people, they were a part of my living, of my emotional… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
“Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of… — Richard Wright Copy Share Image
