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Richard Wright Quotes - Page 2

All Quotes Environment Feelings Justice
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.

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.

Richard Wright
Night, Wake Up, Elbows
Richard Wright (2009). “Black Boy”, p.14, Harper Collins

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

Richard Wright
Lying, Men, Bed
Richard Wright (1991). “Works: Later works: Black boy (American hunger) ; The outsider”

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
Heart, Men, Civilization
Richard Wright (1953). “The Outsider”, New York : Harper

In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air.

Richard Wright
Heart, Night, Light
Richard Wright (1998). “Black Boy”, Turtleback

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.

Richard Wright
Dream, Thinking, Justice
Richard Wright (2010). “American Hunger”, p.9, Harper Collins

He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.

Richard Wright
Blood, Long, Suffering
Richard Wright (1957). “Native Son”, p.277, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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
Book, Support, Alive
Richard Wright (1998). “Black Boy”, Turtleback

I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em.

Richard Wright
Life, Ems, Alive
Richard Wright (1957). “Native Son”, p.392, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

Richard Wright
Drama, Feelings, Answers
Richard Wright (1945). “Black boy: a record of childhood and youth”

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.

Richard Wright
Knowing, Another Chance, Awful
Richard Wright (2009). “Black Boy”, p.42, Harper Collins

It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.

Richard Wright
Book, Support, Abiding

The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.

Richard Wright
Book, Writing, Dark
Richard Wright (1991). “Works”

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