“I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don’t have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn’t be harming anything”

“I am 'too fiery' … yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything.”

“The feeling of exultant joy that there is anyone like that in the world. I shall never see him again, and he did not notice me, or would ever, but there is such a person alive, there is such a life, and I am here on this earth, in this age, to know it!”

“I am basically writing for a general audience rather than an academic audience. So, I explain stuff, I don’t assume knowledge of any of this on the part of the reader. In a kind of general sense I suppose I have, when I am deciding how much needs to be explained, in mind my primary audience.”

“I don’t like to share my personal life… it wouldn’t be personal if I shared it.”

“I have lived among Negroes, all my life, and I am for this Government with slavery under the Constitution as it is. I am for the Government of my fathers with Negroes, I am for it without Negroes. Before I would see this Government destroyed, I would send every negro back to Africa, disintegrated and blotted out of space.”

“I am so constituted that I had rather read bad stuff than nothing.”

“They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!”

“I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”

“I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.”