“I like Paris because I find something here, something of integrity, which I seem to have strangely lost in my own country. It is simplest of all to say that I like to live among people and surroundings where I am not always conscious of 'thou shall not.”

Contrasting freedom of spirit abroad with constraint at home · As commonly attributed from her writings

• Exile
• Freedom
• Identity

“To be a colored man in America and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher.”

On the personal qualities required to live fully under racial constraint · As commonly attributed from her writings

• Humour
• Philosophy
• Race

“Being colored in America at any rate means: Facing the ordinary difficulties of life, getting education, work, in fine getting a living plus fighting every day against some inhibition of natural liberties.”

Describing the double burden of ordinary life plus racial restriction · Essay, Some Notes on Color (1922)

• Freedom
• Race
• Struggle

“But good heavens, it's life, it's colored life. Being colored is being a problem.”

Responding to the claim that race has no place in art · Essay, Some Notes on Color (1922)

• Identity
• Race
• Reality