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

Langston Hughes

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
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
Money and art are far apart.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Art Money One Liner
Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Death Life Live Music Note
The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Finish Start Way 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
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
LANGSTON HUGHES

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

Democracy God Government Myself See
Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Care Different Each Other Ethnicity Nation Togetherness Unity
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Book Language People Suffering
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Afraid Artist Choice Fear Freedom
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
Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Born Death Hard Love Yourself
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

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

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

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