“I am a novelist, not an activist… But I think that no one who reads what I write or who listens to my lectures can doubt that I am enlisted in the freedom movement. As an individual, I am primarily responsible for the health of American literature and culture. When I write, I am trying to make sense out of chaos. To think that a writer must think about his Negroness is to fall into a trap.”

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

“I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.”

“I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.”

“Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.”

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing… I am a recording instrument… I do not presume to impose "story "plot" "continuity"… Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function… I am not an entertainer.”

“I think it’s become clear to people what my motivation is. I am not simply anti-government, and I’m not in opposition to any one person; I want to write about all the things that I think are making us into an unkind society…”

“I am writing definitely primarily for an audience who don’t know India.”

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.”

“I am the sort of writer who needs another form to tell me who I am and what has happened to me…I think all my novels are self-portraits, but there’s no one character who resolves me, or catalyses me, or is me.”