Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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!'

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America. And grow strong.

— Langston Hughes

It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

I went down to the river,

— Langston Hughes

Way Down South in Dixie To a cross roads tree.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

While over Alabama earth Love — and chains are broken.

— Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams That cannot fly.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

I swear to the Lord Everybody but me.

— Langston Hughes

The sea is a desert of waves,

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

O, yes, America will be!

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

— Langston Hughes

My motto, In Return.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Why should it be my loneliness, overlong?

— Langston Hughes

What happens Daddy, ain’t you heard?

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

There’s a certain in a dream deferred.

— Langston Hughes

A certain amount in a dream deferred.

— Langston Hughes

You talk like they around downtown.

— Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come Through compromise and fear.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

You are white —

— Langston Hughes

Looks like what drives me crazy

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Cheap little rhymes

— Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

— Langston Hughes

Life is for the living.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

I went down to the river,

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

— Langston Hughes

Out of love,

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

I am so tired of waiting.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Though you may hear me holler,

— Langston Hughes

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

So since I'm still here livin',

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Pleasured equally

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

I will not take 'but' for an answer.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes