Richard Wright
Richard Wright
Influential African-American author of Black Boy, Native Son, and Uncle Tom's Children. His work helped improve race relations in the 20th century.
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 September 1908
CityRoxie, MS
CountryUnited States of America
hate play feelings
They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.
color skins target
But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target
reading dope drug
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
house mind half
Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!
night elbows wake-up
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
together-again cry reason
there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed
literature protest
All literature is protest.
blood long suffering
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
rain wind leaving
I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . . I was taking a part of the South to transplant 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
glasses law land
We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured and carried off to this land. We smelted iron, danced, made music and folk poems; we sculpted, worked in glass, spun cotton and wool, wove baskets and cloth. We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite. We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.
dream thinking justice
What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.
life alive world
I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em...
drama feelings answers
It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
stories ifs knows
I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].