“I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?”

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.

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.

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

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.

Out of love, No regrets– Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets– Though the return Be never.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

He is the heart of my world. And that’s what makes it so damn beautiful.

A rose may wilt but its true beauty always remains.

It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it? that we get to feel the passion in this world, about anything.

If I had wings and could fly I’d fly all seas to see your unseen beauty amid the whispers of love.

There is no greater sorrow than that of a soul, moving through the tunnels of hope, holding on to the beautiful past while drowning in a pool of darkness all alone, all alone.

There’s beauty in the imperfections of what we do and our value’s so much more than being a size two.

And just like that, he told me that I was beautiful. Without knowing all the wars I wage against myself.

Down to the marrow in your bones, you will always be beautiful to me.