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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

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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Difficult Greatness Help Minority Race
The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Alcohol Depression Fall
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams Greatness Kind Man Oneself Strong
To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Book Creation Man Professional Story Writing
Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Death Escape Happiness
I wish the rent Was heaven sent.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Heaven Myself
A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Interest Object Photograph Reproduction Value
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
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Drive God Hope Myself Place Time
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Book Language People Suffering
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Build Fake God Imagination People
For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Escape Poem Quick Yourself
Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Breathe Country Equality
The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Blood Past Sorrow Tomorrow True
Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Love Naked Shadow Tree Yourself
Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Eyes Love Mistake Relationship Search Yourself
When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Care Cry People Soul Yourself
Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Death Poet Word Yourself
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
There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams Lost Travel
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Love Myself Night Play Rain Song
If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Children Help Honor Man Race Respect Woman Writing Young
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Laughter Yourself
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
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hard Time Life Myself Struggle
Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Break Care Life Patience Perspective

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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