"What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us."

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People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white, I answer, in the words of the song, most emphatically, 'No.'  How do I know what I might be if I were a white man?  I might be a sand-hog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day.  I might be a street-car conductor at $12 or $15 a week.  There is many a white man less fortunate and less well equipped than I am.  In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man.  But I have often found it inconvenient - in America.

— Bert Williams