“When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.”

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.

I’ve known rivers: 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.

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

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.

Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.

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

As these machines leak into every corner of our lives, they will annoy us, infuriate us, and even kill a few of us.

I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

I’ve seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.

I was playing a part of someone dealing dope on a street corner – and there was a guy actually dealing heroin right there. I looked at him, he looked at me, and I got real confused.

I sang do-wop on the street corner before it was called do-wop.I can sing some polkas. And proud of that.

The stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader’s brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing.

Even now, sometimes on street corners… when I meet someone, I see your shadow.

Into your darkest corner, you are safe in my love, you are protected.