Langston Hughes quotes

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?

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.

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

Let America be America again. / Let it be the dream it used to be. / Let it be the pioneer on the plain / Seeking a home where he himself is free. / (America never was America to me.)

Life is a big sea / full of many fish. / I let down my nets / and pull.

Melodramatic maybe, it seems to me now. But then it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart when I threw the books into the water.

It was the period when the Negro was in vogue. I was there. I had a swell time while it lasted. But I thought it wouldn't last long. For how could a large and enthusiastic number of people be crazy about Negroes forever?

The ordinary Negroes hadn't heard of the Negro Renaissance. And if they had, it hadn't raised their wages any.

I got to the Gare du Nord in Paris early one February morning with only seven dollars in my pockets. I didn't know anybody in Paris.

Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere.

I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved.

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

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, / Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, / I heard a Negro play. / Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light / He did a lazy sway.... / He did a lazy sway.... / To the tune o' those Weary Blues.

I got the Weary Blues / And I can't be satisfied. / Got the Weary Blues / And can't be satisfied— / I ain't happy no mo' / And I wish that I had died.

The stars went out and so did the moon. / The singer stopped playing and went to bed / While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. / He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

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.

Rest at pale evening.... / A tall, slim tree.... / Night coming tenderly / Black like me.

Well, son, I'll tell you: / Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

I, too, sing America. / I am the darker brother.

We have tomorrow / Bright before us / Like a flame.

The night is beautiful, / So the faces of my people. / The stars are beautiful, / So the eyes of my people. / Beautiful, also, is the sun. / Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.