Quotes by Richard Wright

Richard Wright

All literature is protest.

Literature

Protest

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.

Attitude

Peaceful

Suffering Of Others

But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Color

Skins

Target

Don’t leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.

Evidence

Inference

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

Cities

Land

Thinking

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.

Black

Jail

White

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.

Elbows

Night

Wake Up

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].

Ifs

Knows

Stories

I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.

African American

Country

People

I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them, kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.

Another Chance

Awful

Knowing

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Abiding

African American

Alive

Another Chance

Answers

Art

Attitude

Awful

Bed

Believe

Black

Book

Character

Cities

Civilization

Color

Country

Cry

Dark

Devotion

Dope

Drama

Drug

Elbows

Environment

Evidence

Expression

Feelings

Forget

Halloween

Heart

Ifs

Imagination

Individuality

Inference

Iron

Ivory

Jail

Knowing

Knows

Land

Leaving

Light

Literature

Lonely

Love Grows

Loyalty

Lying

Medicine

Men

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Richard Wright

Richard Wright

All literature is protest.

But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Don’t leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.

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.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].

I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.

I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them, kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.

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