Langston Hughes

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?”

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

“Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.”

“My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.”

“We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.”

“My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast.”

“Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.”

“Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.”

“In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.”

“To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'”

“One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.”

“I, too, sing America. And grow strong.”

“It's such a Bore Being always Poor.”

“They'll see how beautiful I am I, too, am America.”

“Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.”

“My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.”

“The night is beautiful, So are the faces of my people.”

“I've known rivers: My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

“I've known rivers: My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

“The stars went out and so did the moon. He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.”

“I went down to the river,”

“Way Down South in Dixie To a cross roads tree.”

“Love is a naked shadow On a gnarled and naked tree.”

“While over Alabama earth Love — and chains are broken.”

“Hold fast to dreams That cannot fly.”

“I was so sick last night I Almost made me blind.”

“I swear to the Lord Everybody but me.”

“The sea is a desert of waves,”

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”

“Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.”

“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — That any man be crushed by one above.”

“O, let my land be a land where Liberty Equality is in the air we breathe.”

“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.”

“For all the dreams we've dreamed Except the dream that's almost dead today.”

“O, let America be America again — And yet must be — the land where every man is free.”

“Sure, call me any ugly name you choose — America!”

“O, yes, America will be!”

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, And make America again!”

“You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word “Negro” is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow.”

“For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.”

“My motto, In Return.”

“When you turn the corner All the corners that are left.”

“Why should it be my loneliness, overlong?”

“What happens Daddy, ain’t you heard?”

“What happens to a dream deferred? Or does it explode?”

“There’s a certain in a dream deferred.”

“A certain amount in a dream deferred.”

“You talk like they around downtown.”

“Democracy will not come Through compromise and fear.”

“I tire so of hearing people say, I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”

“The instructor said,”

“It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.”

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. the same things other folks like who are other races.”

“You are white —”

“”

“Looks like what drives me crazy”

“Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.”

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

“Cheap little rhymes”

“What happens to a dream deferred?”

“Life is for the living.”

“Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.”

“I went down to the river,”

“Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.”

“In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.”

“One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.”

“Violent anger makes me physically ill.”

“Out of love,”

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”

“One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.”

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

“I am so tired of waiting.”

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”

“Though you may hear me holler,”

“My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

“When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.”

“So since I'm still here livin',”

“I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.”

“Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.”

“Pleasured equally”

“The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.”

“I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.”

“I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.”

“Violent anger makes me physically ill.”

“I must never write when I do not want to write.”

“I will not take 'but' for an answer.”

“Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.”

“Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.”

“Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people's problems were worse than ours.”

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

“Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.”

“Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.”

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”

“Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.”