“I realize I'm black, but id like to be viewed as a person, and that is everybody's wish.”

“In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'What is it then?'It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”

“No ID, no person”

“Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.”

“Sometimes I'm a black. Not everyone realizes blackness has to be conferred upon you again and again. It's like getting your nails done. Or being pantsed. People assume I'm cool.”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”