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

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.

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

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.

Money and art are far apart.

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed – Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

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

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Here I am, a mosaic of becomings.

That all may be so, but when I begin to exercise that power I am not conscious of the power, but only of the limitations imposed on me.

Coffee falls into the stomach. Ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop. the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink.

When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.

Victory is for those who can say “Victory is mine”. Success is for those who can begin saying “I will succeed” and say “I have succeeded” in the end.