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For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

Langston Hughes

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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Animal Be Yourself Equality Government Oppression Place Safety
Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Detail Happiness Pleasure Search Seek
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
Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Breathe Country Equality
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
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Company Darkness Eat Growth Laughter Myself Strong
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!
LANGSTON HUGHES

Earth God Live Right Teaching Togetherness
For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Escape Poem Quick Yourself
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
Looks like what drives me crazy Don’t have no effect on you– But I’m gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Affect Crazy Drive Love Relationship Yourself
When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beginning Color Moon Poem Police Stop Talk
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

Hungry Morning Myself Price
Life dosent frighten me at all.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Fear Life Myself One Liner Scare
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Earth Rain Summer Welcome Yourself
Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Happiness Music People Poor
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Life Lying Opportunity System Truth
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
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Drink Eat Learning Life Reading Sleep Understand Work
LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Democracy Freedom Liberty True Word
Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Break Care Life Patience Perspective
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
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Discover Life Yourself
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Alive Learning Myself Return Stay
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Acceptance Black Blood Inspirational Powerful
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Jump Myself River Thinking
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
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hands Hold On Yourself

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

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For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

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Popular Authors

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