I'm tired of chasing people.

I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large cit…

I thought they'd get one of us, but Jack, after all he's been through, never worried about it. I thought it would be me.

Every time you come in yelling that God damn 'Rise and Shine!' 'Rise and Shine!' I say to myself, 'How lucky dead people are!'

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office.