Richard WrightThinkers

America is a country which — frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity — hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness.

America is our too-young and too-new country -- lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid -- insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black.

The Artist is someone who must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

Evidence is best provided when at hand — Don't leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.

The Expatriot is one who leaves to fling themself into the unknown, to take part of home and to transplant it in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.

The Expatriot is one who leaves not to forget home, but so that some day one might understand it.

Literature is always protest.

Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.

The Oppressed is those for whom violence is a personal necessity. It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

The Prison is a blueprint of man's heart — Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons.

Self-realization is that without which men can starve as much as they can from a lack of bread.

Truth is sometimes emotional rather than factual.