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.
LANGSTON HUGHESWe build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
More Langston Hughes Quotes
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Life dosent frighten me at all.
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Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
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But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.
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I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
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When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
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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.
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The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.
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When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.
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Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
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I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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There is no color line in art.
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Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you – / Then, it will be true.
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For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.
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Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.
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Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.
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I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
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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.
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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.
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An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
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The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.
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Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
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The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm
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Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.
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Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
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Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.
LANGSTON HUGHES