The Fire Next Time

Freedom is hard to bear.

The American Dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare on the private domestic and international levels.

And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that was I said was true.

Was heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?

Black people, mainly, look down or look up, but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away.

They are, in fact, still trapped in a history they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

It is the innocence that constitutes the crime.