Langston Hughes Quotes - Page 6

I’s been livin’ a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an’ I knows there ain’t no room in de world fo’ nothin’ mo’n love. I know, chile! Ever’thing there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on yo’ soul. An’ to love sho ‘nough, you got to have a spot in yo’ heart fo’ ever’body – great an’ small, white an’ black, an’ them what’s good an’ them what’s evil – ‘cause love ain’t got no crowded-out places where de good ones stay an’ de bad ones can’t come in. When it gets that way, then it ain’t love.

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

You and I By Henry Alford My hand is lonely for your clasping, dear; My ear is tired waiting for your call. I want your strength to help, your laugh to cheer; Heart, soul and senses need you, one and all. I droop without your full, frank sympathy; We ought to be together—you and I; We want each other so, to comprehend The dream, the hope, things planned, or seen, or wrought. Companion, comforter and guide and friend, As much as love asks love, does thought ask thought. Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly, We ought to be together, you and I.

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

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!

I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.

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 aren?t it doesn?t matter.

I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.

So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.

While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve and hate will die unborn. Love and chains are broken.

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

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.

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.

Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-

To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!

I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.

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.

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair

It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . 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!"