To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.
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.
Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.
The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.
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.
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.
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.
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.
Humor is when the joke’s on you but hits the other fellow first – before it boomerangs.
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.
I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn’t, But you thought you would.
To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.
I got the Weary Blues And I can’t be satisfied.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.
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.