{"author":"Richard Wright","author_id":"Richard+Wright","total_quotes":45,"quotes":[{"text":"He lay still, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly before him, and drifted into dreams of his problems, compulsively living out dialogues, summing up emotional scenes with his mother, Dot, and his friends. Repeatedly he chided himself to go to sleep, but it did no good, for he was hungry for these waking visions that depicted his dilemmas, yet he knew that such brooding did not help; in fact he was wasting his waning strength, for into these unreal dramas he was putting the whole of his ardent being. The long hours dragged on.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["drama","emotional","strength"],"id":3595,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em...","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["epiphany","feeling-alive","fighting-for-self","realization","self-worth"],"id":36676,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"I would write:'The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.'Or:'The child's clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream.'The old man huddled in the dark doorway, his bony face lit by the burning yellow in the windows of distant skycrapers.'My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["narratives","on-writing","swooning-over-sentences","writing-advice","writing-process"],"id":38386,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["right"],"id":68574,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"...The real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is building its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["revolution"],"id":105689,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one live in a world in which one's mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and tradition meant everything? There were no answers.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["ity","autism-spectrum","black-and-white","conformity","right-and-wrong"],"id":122814,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["death","lie","truth"],"id":128868,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"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? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["civilization","culture","fear","man","philosophy"],"id":130952,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"Hate yearned to destroy and sought to forget, but love could not. Love strove creatively towards days that had yet to come.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["creative","hate","love"],"id":134521,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"},{"text":"The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.","author":"Richard Wright","tags":["artist","monster","must "],"id":135025,"author_id":"Richard+Wright"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":45,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}