The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
Yet by your gracious patience
I will a round unvarnished tale deliver
Of my whole course of love.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)