Langston Hughes Quotes

I will not take ‘but’ for an answer.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It’s such a Bore Being always Poor.

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

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

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

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

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

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.