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The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing-a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. THe Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiousity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!

W.E.B. Du Bois

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Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. "The Souls of White Folk." Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Harcourt, Brace And Howe, 1920.

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Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. "The Souls of White Folk." Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Oxford University Press, 2014.

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A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Amiri Baraka

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Jones, LeRoi (aka Imamu Amiri Baraka). "Tokenism: 300 Years for 5 Cents." Kulchur, Spring 1962, no. 5.

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An accident of timing makes the book in question indelible.

Colson Whitehead

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Whitehead, Colson. "The Hum Inside the Skull, Revisited." The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2005.

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No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge... You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Colson Whitehead

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Whitehead, Colson. The Colossus of New York. Doubleday, 2003, pt. 1.

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Life is short. Work is for those who will never be able to understand life. Idleness cannot degrade a man. To the discriminating eye it differs from laziness.

René Maran

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Maran, Rene. Batouala. Albin Michel, 1921, ch. 1.

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Maran, Rene. Batouala, translated by Adele Szold Seltzer. Heinemann, 1988, ch. 1.

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The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

Ida B. Wells

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Wells, Ida B. "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." 5 Oct. 1892, New York City, NY, USA.

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Wells, Ida B. "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." Great Speeches by American Women. Dover Publications, 2012.

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Once you find the truth you ought to be prepared to stand on the street corner and use all your gifts to right the wrong.

Maya Angelou

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Angelou, Maya. "The West Interview: Maya Angelou." Interviewed by Sal Manna. San Jose Mercury News, 22 June 1986.

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I don't wait to be struck by lightning and don't need certain slants of light in order to write.

Toni Morrison

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Morrison, Toni. "The Language Must Not Sweat." Interviewed by Thomas LeClair. The New Republic, 21 Mar. 1981.

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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin

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Baldwin, James. "As Much Truth As One Can Bear." The New York Times, 14 Jan. 1962.

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There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Toni Morrison

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Morrison, Toni. "No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear." The Nation: 150th Anniversary Special, 23 Mar. 2015.

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I let the audience follow me, if it is interested.

Richard Wright

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Wright, Richard. Interviewed by L'Express. 18 Oct. 1955.

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Morning reading-like morning newspapers, morning sex, morning lie-ins, and morning running-is the luxury of childless people.

Zadie Smith

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Smith, Zadie. "Zadie Smith: By the Book." The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2016.

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It would be nice to forget history, but we do it at our peril.

Lucille Clifton

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Clifton, Lucille. "The Healing World of Lucille Clifton." Interviewed by Jacqueline Jones Lamon. Mosaic Magazine, 28 Aug. 2012.

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I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, "You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth."