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
judgment
In my judgment, he really did need an attorney.
bubble consider expecting geniuses held might paper plant power together work
It's not without its hiccups, ... You don't go in expecting things to always work smoothly, but Romanians are geniuses at what we might consider to be jury-rigged solutions. The power plant might be held together by paper clips and bubble gum, but it works.
dates fade instead memories passage providing
As a rule, memories fade with the passage of time, instead of remembering with specificity but providing no dates or times as backup. It was the first time, to our knowledge, these things have ever been said.
integrity men self
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
inference evidence
Don't leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.
reading dope drug
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
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.
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.
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 [...].