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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.

Langston Hughes

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

Beginning Black Live Oppression Ourselves Poet Writing
A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Black Dreams Earth Freedom Man Race White World Yourself
My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Condition Explanation Human Kind Seek
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Bird Break Death Deep Dreams Fast Fly Hold Life Wings
The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Blood Past Sorrow Tomorrow True
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

Home Live Misery Radio Thinking Yourself
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Artist Creation Darkness Expression Happiness People Skin White Young
Life dosent frighten me at all.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Fear Life Myself One Liner Scare
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Difficult Greatness Help Minority Race
Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Break Care Life Patience Perspective
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hands Hold On Yourself
The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Alcohol Depression Fall
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 HUGHES

Believe Creative Direction Politics Reaction Success Thinking Writing
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Best Feeling Happiness Myself Poem Worst Writing
Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Country Dangerous Grave Himself Poet Poetry Politics World
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Fortune Hell Summer Taste Winter Yourself

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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