Langston Hughes Quotes - Page 7

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.

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You'll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a - You think It's a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain't you heard something underneath like a - What did I say? Sure, I'm happy! Take it away! Dream Boogie Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.

In the spring rain, the pond and the river become one. Into every life some rain must fall. Usually when your car windows are down. It raineth on the Just and the Unjust Alike, But the Unjust stealeth the Just's umbrella Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.

Your explanation depresses me," I said. "Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.

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?

Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Do you know that there are libraries in our country that will not stock a book by a Negro writer, not even as a gift? There are towns where Negro newspapers and magazines cannot be sold except surreptitiously. There are American magazines that have never published anything by Negroes. There are film studios that have never hired a Negro writer. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

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

These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.