Quotes From the Classic Novel 'Black Boy'

"Black Boy" by Richard Wright was first published in 1945. This autobiographical novel was a bestseller, and it is an important 20th-century work of literature. Another famous novel by Richard Wright, "Native Son," was published in 1940. Here are a few quotes from "Black Boy."

"Black Boy Quotes

"The faint cool kiss of sensuality when dew came onto my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning."

"I'm hungry now, but I won't live with you."

"I'm doing all I can,"

"When you get through, kiss back there."

"White, red and black," but quickly tells him to hush, saying, "They'll call you a colored man when you grow up. Do you mind, Mr. Wright?"

"You can't eat a dead dog, can you?"

"If I kissed my elbow, I would turn into a girl."

"At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering."

"I said to myself, that boy just doesn't know what he's doing..."

"The naked will of power seemed always to walk in the wake of a hymn."

"You ought to know God through some church."

"Even if that isn't right, it's not far wrong."

"I never saw a dog bite that could really hurt..."

"the principal's speech is the better speech."

"My ass is tough and quarters is scarce."

"This was the culture from which i sprang. This was the terror from which I fled."

"Color hate defined the place of black life as below that of white life..."

"Having been thrust out of the world because of my race, I had accepted my destiny by not being curious about what shaped it."

"Trying to please everybody, I pleased nobody..."

"We must have a purge."

"You lost people!"

"I lived in the South and I never saw any chain gangs."

"Get out of our ranks!"

"I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human."