Langston Hughes quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

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

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.

Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.

It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

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

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

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 aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams...

While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve and hate will die unborn. Love and chains are broken.

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

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You'll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a - You think It's a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain't you heard something underneath like a - What did I say? Sure, I'm happy! Take it away! Dream Boogie Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!

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

Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night- And I love the rain.

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

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

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That's the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."

Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath America will be!

The sea is a desert of waves,A wilderness of water.

Cheap little rhymesA cheap little tuneAre sometimes as dangerousAs a sliver of the moon.

What happens to a dream deferred?

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

Though you may hear me holler,And you may see me cry--I'll be dogged, sweet baby,If you gonna see me die.

So since I'm still here livin',I guess I will live on.I could've died for love--But for livin' I was born.

Looks like what drives me crazyDon't have no effect on you--But I'm gonna keep on at itTill it drives you crazy, too.

Hold fast to dreams,For if dreams dieLife is a broken-winged bird,That cannot fly.

I went down to the river,I set down on the bank.I tried to think but couldn't,So I jumped in and sank.

In the spring rain, the pond and the river become one. Into every life some rain must fall. Usually when your car windows are down. It raineth on the Just and the Unjust Alike, But the Unjust stealeth the Just's umbrella Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

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

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

...the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it,....

7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?

Believing everything she read In the daily news, (No in-between to choose) She thought that only One side won, Not that BOTH Might lose.

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.

But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There's a song that says, "the time ain't long." That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.

Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

Gather up In the arms of your loveâ??Those who expect No love from above.

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? â?¢ â?¢ â?¢ â?¢ You think It's a happy beat?

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.

How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. ~ "Sea Calm

Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first -- before it boomerangs.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!

I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head-- So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.

I dream a world... where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!

I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind.

I loved my friend He went away from me There's nothing more to say The poem ends, Soft as it began- I loved my friend.

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.

I will not take "but" for an answer.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.

It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . 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!"

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.

I've been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-- But I don't care! I'm still here!

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.

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

Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair

Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

Money and art are far apart.

Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.