Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
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.
Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.
Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake.
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!
I will not take ‘but’ for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy’s ‘but’ too long.
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams...
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.
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.
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.
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.
The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
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!
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.
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!