Native Son Quotes

“The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

“Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn't it only the naive who find all of this baffling? If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?”
― Richard Wright

“It had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”
― Richard Wright, Cliffs Notes on Wright's Black Boy

“How could one find out about life when one was about to die?”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

“But he is product of a dislocated society; he is a dispossessed and disinherited man; he is all of this, and he lives amide the greatest plenty on earth and he is looking and feeling for a way out.”
― Richard Wright, Native Son