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Richard Wright

130 quotes

“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.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the moment he makes the attempt his words falter, for he is confronted and defied by the inexplicable array of his own emotions. Emotions are subjective and he can communicate them only when he clothes them in objective guise; and how can he ever be so arrogant as to know when he is dressing up the right emotion in the right Sunday suit?”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, because the blacks were so close to the very civilization which sought to keep them out, because they could not help but react in some way to its incentives and prizes, and because the very tissue of their consciousness received its tone and timbre from the strivings of that dominant civilization, oppression spawned among them a myriad variety of reactions, reaching from outright blind rebellion to sweet, other-worldly submissiveness.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sensed, too, that the Southern scheme of oppression was but an appendage of a far vaster and in many respects more ruthless and impersonal commodity-profit machine.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was this intolerable sense of feeling and understanding so much, and yet living on a plane of social reality where the look of a world which one did not make or own struck one with a blinding objectivity and tangibility, that made me grasp the revolutionary impulse in my life and the lives of those about me and far away.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But he is product of a dislocated society; he is a dispossessed and disinherited man; he is all of this, and he lives amid the greatest possible plenty on earth and he is looking and feeling for a way out.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And in a boy like Bigger, young, unschooled, whose subjective life was clothed in the tattered rags of American "culture," this primitive fear and ecstasy were naked, exposed, unprotected by religion or a framework of government or a scheme of society whose final faiths would gain his love and trust; unprotected by trade or profession, faith or belief; opened to every trivial blast of daily or hourly circumstance.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I every wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And then, while writing, a new and thrilling relationship would spring up under the drive emotion, coalescing and telescoping alien facts into a known and felt truth. That was the deep fun of the job; to feel within my body that I was pushing out to new areas of feeling, strange landmarks of emotion, tramping upon foreign soil, compounding new relationships of perceptions, making new and - until that very split second of time! - unheard-of and unfelt effects with words.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't know if Native Son is a good book or a bad book. And I don't know if the book I'm working on now will be a good book or a bad book. And I really don't care. The mere writing of it will be more fun and a deeper satisfaction than any praise or blame from anybody. I feel that I'm lucky to be alive to write novels today, when the whole world is caught in the pangs of war and change.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And still when the delicate and unconscious machinery of race relations slips, there will be murder again. How can law contradict the lives of millions of people and hope to be administered successfully?”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life. Men adjust themselves to their land; they create their own laws of being; their notions of right and wrong.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger- like water ebbing and flowing from the tug of a far-away, invisible force.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fear", p. 31, Harper Row 1966
“He was sitting in a white home; dim lights burned round him; strange objects challenged him; and he was feeling angry and uncomfortable.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fear", p. 47, Harper Row 1966
“There were rare moments when a feeling and longing for solidarity with other black people would take hold of him. He would dream of making a stand against that white force, but that dream would fade when he looked at the other black people near him. Even though black like them, he felt there was too much difference between him and them to allow for a common binding and a common life. Only when threatened with death could that happen; only in fear and shame, with their backs against a wall, could that happen. But never could they sink their differences in hope.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Flight", p. 109, Harper Row 1966
“He was not satisfied with the way things stood now; he was a man who had come in sight of a goal, then had won it, and in winning it had seen just within his grasp another goal, higher, greater. He had learned to shout and had shouted and no ear had heard him; he had just learned to walk and was walking but could not see the ground beneath his feel; he had long been yearning for weapons to hold in his hands and suddenly found that his hands held weapons that were invisible.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Flight", p.125, Harper Row 1966
“He felt that he had his destiny in his grasp. He was more alive than he could ever remember having been; his mind and attention were pointed focused toward a goal. For the first time in his life he moved consciously between two sharply defined poles: he was moving away from the threatening penalty of death, from the death-like times that brought him that tightness and hotness in his chest; and he was moving toward that sense of fullness he had so often but inadequately felt in magazines and movies.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because he could go now, run off if he wanted to and leave it all behind, he felt a certain sense of power, a power born of a latent capacity to live. He was conscious of this quiet, warm, clean rich house, this room with this bed so soft, the wealthy white people moving in luxury to all sides of him, whites living in smugness, a security, a certainty that he had never known. The knowledge that he had killed a white girl they loved and regarded as their symbol of beauty made him feel equal of them, like a man who had been somehow cheated, but had now evened the score.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed ... It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every movement of his body is an unconscious protest. Every desire, every dream, no matter how intimate or personal, is a plot or a conspiracy. Every hope is a plan for insurrection. Every glance of the eye is a threat. His very existence is a crime against the state!”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against the wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape. But it was rape when he cried out in hate deep in his heart as he felt the strain of living day by day. That, too, was rape.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock?”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If only ten or twenty Negroes had been put into slavery, we would call it injustice, but there were hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If laying down my life could stop the suffering in the world I'd do it. But I don't believe anything can stop it, I told him. He heard me but he did not speak. I wanted to say more to him, but I knew that it would have been useless. Though older than I, he had neither known nor felt anything of life for himself; he had been carefully reared by his mother and father and he had always been told what to feel.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All my life I have done nothing but feel and cultivate my feelings; all their lives they had done nothing but strive for petty goals, the trivial material prizes of American life. We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This business of saving souls had not ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited. In essence, the tribe was asking us whether we shared its feelings; if we refused to join the church, it was equivalent to saying no, to placing ourselves in the position of moral monsters.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Watching the white people eat would make my empty stomach churn and I would grow vaguely angry. Why could I not eat when I was hungry? Why did I always have to wait until others were through? I could not understand why some people had enough food and others did not.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I soon made myself a nuisance by asking far too many questions of everybody. Every happening in the neighborhood, no matter how trivial, became my business.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sat listening to pupils recite, knowing and understanding what was being said and done, but utterly incapable of opening my mouth when called upon. The students around me seemed so sure of themselves that I despaired of ever being able to conduct myself as they did.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not to know the end of the tale filled me with a sense of emptiness, loss. I hungered for the sharp, frightening, breathtaking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me, and I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were and read them to feed that thirst for violence that was in me, for intrigue, for plotting, for secrecy, for bloody murders.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To hold an attitude of antagonism or distrust toward Jews was bred in us from childhood; it was not merely racial prejudice, it was a part of our cultural heritage.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was puzzled. Was there something happening next door to where I lived that I did not know? I thought I had poked my nose into every bit of conceivable business in the neighborhood; if something was being sold next door, then I certainly wanted to know about it.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the stars twinkled more than usual on any given night, it meant that the angels in heaven were happy and were flitting across the doors of heaven; and since stars were merely holes ventilating heaven, the twinkling came from the angels flitting past the holes that admitted air into the holy home of God.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible…Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I was still shy and half paralyzed when in the presence of a crowd, and my first day at the new school made me the laughingstock of the classroom. I was sent to the blackboard to write my name and address; I knew my name and address, knew how to write it, knew how to spell it; but standing at the blackboard with the eyes of the many girls and boys looking at my back made me freeze inside and I was unable to write a single letter.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sat and cursed myself. Why did I always appear so dumb when I was called upon to perform something in a crowd? I knew how to write as well as any pupil in the classroom, and no doubt I could read better than any of them, and I could talk fluently and expressively when I was sure of myself. Then why did strange faces make me freeze? I sat with my ears and neck burning, hearing the pupils whisper about me, hating myself, hating them; I sat still as stone and a storm of emotion surged through me”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Granny intimated boldly, basing her logic on God’s justice, that one sinful person in a household could bring down the wrath of God upon the entire establishment, damning both the innocent and the guilty, and on more than one occasion she interpreted my mother’s long illness as the result of my faithlessness.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many of the religious symbols appealed to my sensibilities and I responded to the dramatic vision of life held by the church, feeling that to live day by day with death as one’s sole thought was to be so compassionately sensitive toward all life as to view all men as slowly dying, and the trembling sense of fate that welled up, sweet and melancholy, from the hymns blended with the sense of fate that I had already caught from life.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On our way home she would not utter a single word. I walked anxiously beside her, looking at her tired old white face, the wrinkles that lined her neck, the deep, waiting black eyes, and the frail body, and I knew more than she thought I knew about the meaning of religion, the hunger of the human heart for that which is not and can never be, the thirst of the human spirit to conquer and transcend the implacable limitations of human life.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And at last the darkness of the night descended and softly-kissed the surface of the watery grave and the only sound was the lonely rustle of the ancient trees,” I wrote as I penned the final line. I was excited; I read it over and saw that there was a yawning void in it. There was no plot, no action, nothing save atmosphere and longing and death. But I had never in my life done anything like it; I had made something, no matter how bad it was; and it was mine…Now, to whom could I show it?”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As summer neared, my mother suffered yet another stroke of paralysis and again I had to watch her suffer, listen to her groans, powerless to help. I used to lie awake nights and think back to the early days in Arkansas, tracing my mother’s life, reliving events, wondering why she had apparently been singled out for so much suffering, meaningless suffering, and I would feel more awe than I had ever felt in church. My mind could find no answer and I would feel rebellious against all life. But I never felt humble.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How long was this going to last? How long was I going to be beaten for trifles and less than trifles? I was already so conditioned toward my relatives that when I passed them I actually had a nervous tic in my muscles, and now I was going to be beaten by someone who did not like the tone of voice in which I spoke.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My schoolmates could not understand why anyone would want to write a story; and, above all, they could not understand why I had called it The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre. The mood out of which a story was written was the most alien thing conceivable to them.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their rewards were bestowed upon us blacks in the degree that we could make them feel safe and superior.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source