“The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.”

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.

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.

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.

There’s no absolutes in life – only vodka.

Exercise is for people who can’t handle drugs or alcohol.

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

I still drink vodka; I’m not an advocate of drinking, but I’m no angel. I don’t like grass, because it just makes me hungry.

If one intends to make beer from oats, it is prepared with hops.

I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.

Don’t give him another thought, baby girl. He wanted a cup of tea; you’re a shot of whiskey.