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

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.

Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

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

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop–you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

I dont want to tell my dreams, I want to show them!

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.

Dreams are always crushing when they don’t come true.

When her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.