“Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.”

I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

There is no color line in art.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

Road’s in front o’ me, Nothin’ to do but walk.

I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

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!

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

Losing all expectations is complete freedom.

Being impatient is the cause of expectations and overthinking.  

Learn how to love without expectations and conditions.

An expectation is a hidden agenda with control at its root.

You can’t just expect your dreams to materialize because you want them to.

My country has given me this beautiful dark skin, courage, and strength to stand up for what I believe in, and you’ve shown me how determined and courageous our people are, for continuing to stand strong in a world where not much is expected of us.

Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

Death is always sad, I suppose, to us who look forward to it: I expect it will seem very different when we can look back upon it.