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“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

“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

“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“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. ”
― Richard Wright