Quotes from Lorraine Hansberry

Mine is, after all, the generation that had come to maturity drinking in the forebodings of the Silones, Koestlers, and Richard Wrights. It had left us ill-prepared for decisions that had to be made in our own time about Algeria, Birmingham, or the Bay of Pigs.

When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.

It's dangerous, son.' 'What's dangerous?' 'When a man goes outside his house to look for peace.

Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace?

Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.

There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.

The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.

I have long since passed that period when I felt personal discomfort at the sight of an ill-dressed or illiterate Negro. Social awareness has taught me where to lay the blame.

This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.

Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! ... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress...

Men continue to misinterpret the second-rate status of women as implying a privileged status for themselves; heterosexuals think the same way about homosexuals; gentiles about Jews; whites about blacks; haves about have-nots.

With feminine vengeance)

Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom.

MAMA: You must not dislike people 'cause they well off, honey. BENEATHA: Why not? It makes just as much sense as disliking people 'cause they are poor, and lots of people do that.

Of love and my parents, there is little to be written; their relationship to their children was utilitarian. We were fed and housed and dressed and outfitted with more cash than our associates and that was all. We were also vaguely taught certain vague absolutes: that we were better than no one but infinitely superior to everyone...

Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men and people in general.

I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you on this occasion because you are young, gifted, and black…I, for one, can think of no more dynamic combination that a person might be. . . And that is why I say to you that, though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic—to be young, gifted, and black.

The acceptance of our present condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children.

Non aver paura di fermarti un istante a pensare.

You're a nice-looking girl Ã¢â'¬Â¦ all over. That's all you need, honey, forget the atmosphere.

When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

Do you really think the rape of a continent dissolves in cigarette smoke?