“And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.”

“I have felt that some sort of awful shame is attached to my name and that I have somehow brought this shame along from somewhere I have never been, and that I have carried this sin as my sin even though I have never committed it; this sin pursues me all my life, which life is undoubtedly not my own even thought I live it , I suffer from it die of it.”

“Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.”

“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

“Like most depressions that plague people who have been more fortunate than most, I was ashamed of mine because there appeared to me no convincing cause for it; I just felt as though I had come off the rails somewhere.”

“I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.”