The individual man is transitory, but the pulse of life and of growth goes on after he is gone, buried under a wreath of magnolia leaves.

I can only tell you that when long soul-searching and a combination of circumstances delivered me of my last prejudices, there was an exalted sense of liberation. It was not the Negro who became free,...

No man should have proprietary rights over land who does not use that land wisely and lovingly.

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three.

We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live...

He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He...

Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all....

We need above all, I think, a certain remoteness from urban confusion.

A part of the placidity of the South comes from the sense of well-being that follows the heart-and-body-warming consumption of breads fresh from the oven. We serve cold baker’s bread to our enemies, trusting that...

When a wave of love takes over a human being… such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer.