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

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

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

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

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

There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss.

I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head– So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.

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.

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

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

O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that’s in my mind.

If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

Darkness is dawn not yet born.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.