Status Updates From Black Boy

“You’d like them,” Sol said.
“I don’t want to be organized,” I said.
“They can help you to write,” he said.
“Nobody can tell me how or what to write,” I said.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 315). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

'I was introduced to the Irish chap’s friends and we formed a “gang” of Irish, Jewish, and Negro wits who poked fun at government, the masses, statesmen, and political parties.'

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 285). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

"My reading had created a vast sense of distance between me and the world in which I lived and tried to make a living, and that sense of distance was increasing each day."

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 253). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

“Look here,” I said. “Don’t believe what Mr. Olin says.” “I see now,” Harrison said. “He’s playing a dirty trick on us.”

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 237). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

"For weeks after that I could not believe in my feelings. My personality was numb, reduced to a lumpish, loose, dissolved state. I was a non-man, something that knew vaguely that it was human but felt that it was not."

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 194). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Devastating

"This business of saving souls had no ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited."

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 154). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

"Wherever I found religion in my life I found strife, the attempt of one individual or group to rule another in the name of God. The naked will to power seemed always to walk in the wake of a hymn."

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 136). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

“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.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 116). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

“Who are they going to shoot?” “Germans.” “Who are Germans?” “They are the enemy.” “What’s an enemy?”

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (p. 56). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

"...that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, and who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed-of shores of knowing."

Wright, Richard. Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] (pp. 34-35).