73 Quotes by Darryl Pinckney

"When I was in high school, I looked for the black presence in a British historical tradition - before too much slavery and empire - that would not cost me my self-respect."

"The history of blacks is complicated, fragmented, disturbing to contemplate - not a neat trail of challenges met or of felled trees blocking the path to the mountain top."

"When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused."

"Jean Toomer is a phantom of the Harlem Renaissance. Pick up any general study of the literature written by Afro-Americans, and there is the name of Jean Toomer. In biographies and memoirs of Harlem Renaissance figures, his name is invoked as if he had been one of the sights along Lenox Avenue."

"'High Cotton' is more conscious of class than 'Black Deutschland.'"

"I wrote 'Black Deutschland' very quickly one summer, probably because I had a lot of it in pieces and fragments sitting around over the years as false starts or notes."

"I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids."

"Unfortunately for me, I was one of these people who took a long time to learn that the material at his feet was fine."

"I'd waste a holiday trying to set a story in this new place I'd visit, whereas I would never write a story about Indianapolis."

"I had a lot of notes and fragments and observations that never amounted to anything. After the Wall had gone down, so many people were writing about Berlin, I didn't have the same urgency or feel enough authority."