I am a writer. I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality.

Lorraine Hansberry

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.

Lorraine Hansberry

being-alone loneliness running

Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so - doubly dynamic - to be young, gifted and black.

Lorraine Hansberry

gifted black young

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

Lorraine Hansberry

success inspiring happiness

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

Lorraine Hansberry

raisins inspirational love

...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].

Lorraine Hansberry

struggle mean children

One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.

Lorraine Hansberry

eye feelings heart

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

Lorraine Hansberry

writing believe thinking

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

Lorraine Hansberry

care energy caring

I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and - I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.

Lorraine Hansberry

generations wish beautiful

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.

Lorraine Hansberry

intelligence women brain

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Lorraine Hansberry

dream inspiring love

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.

Lorraine Hansberry

dream men children

Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually -- without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.

Lorraine Hansberry

struggle doubt giving

There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.

Lorraine Hansberry

feminist ignorance roots

A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition

Lorraine Hansberry

agitation groups forever

I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.

Lorraine Hansberry

destiny stars thinking

I'm just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything?... I'm not going to be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe. I don't even think about that. I just get so tired of Him getting the credit for things the human race achieves through its own effort. Now, there simply is no God. There's only man. And it's he who makes miracles.

Lorraine Hansberry

tired men believe

Beneatha: You didn't tell us what Alaiyo means... for all I know, you might be calling me Little Idiot or something... ... Asagai: It means... it means One for Whom Bread--Food--Is Not Enough.

Lorraine Hansberry

calling littles mean

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.

Lorraine Hansberry

mind giving men

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all... 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.

Lorraine Hansberry

taken children thinking