Langston Hughes Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will not take "but" for an answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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 lead

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

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

I am amazed that my work of Dylan was chosen as his portrait,

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

Uncle Willy's Chocolate Factory ... with lots of help from really good assistants.

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.

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.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-

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

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.

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.

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.

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

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.

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.

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

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.

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.

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.

Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Do you know that there are libraries in our country that will not stock a book by a Negro writer, not even as a gift? There are towns where Negro newspapers and magazines cannot be sold except surreptitiously. There are American magazines that have never published anything by Negroes. There are film studios that have never hired a Negro writer. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,

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.

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!

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

Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?

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.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

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.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

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

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

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?

Your explanation depresses me," I said. "Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Peace We passed their graves: The dead men there, Winners or losers, Did not care. In the dark They could not see Who had gained The victory.

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.

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

There is no color line in death.

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

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

You and I By Henry Alford My hand is lonely for your clasping, dear; My ear is tired waiting for your call. I want your strength to help, your laugh to cheer; Heart, soul and senses need you, one and all. I droop without your full, frank sympathy; We ought to be together—you and I; We want each other so, to comprehend The dream, the hope, things planned, or seen, or wrought. Companion, comforter and guide and friend, As much as love asks love, does thought ask thought. Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly, We ought to be together, you and I.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!

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.

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."

When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

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

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.

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

These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.

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

I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.

Road's in front o' me, Nothin' to do but walk.

Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.

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

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.

To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.

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.

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

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.

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.

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

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’s been livin’ a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an’ I knows there ain’t no room in de world fo’ nothin’ mo’n love. I know, chile! Ever’thing there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on yo’ soul. An’ to love sho ‘nough, you got to have a spot in yo’ heart fo’ ever’body – great an’ small, white an’ black, an’ them what’s good an’ them what’s evil – ‘cause love ain’t got no crowded-out places where de good ones stay an’ de bad ones can’t come in. When it gets that way, then it ain’t love.

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

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.

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

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.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

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!

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.

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.

Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

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

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

What happens to a dream deferred?

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.

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.

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

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss