“We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.”

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

Out of love, No regrets– Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets– Though the return Be never.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That’s the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

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

Everything there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on your old soul.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.

We’d never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.

It matters little how one begins, provided that he be resolved to go on well, and to end well.

Every moment is a new beginning.

Life begins at eighty.

Begin where you are. Don’t wait for someone else to change things for you. Do it yourself.

In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.