Langston Hughes Quotes
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I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.
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Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.
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The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you - Then, it will be true.
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I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.
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Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
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The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.
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For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay - Except the dream that's almost dead today.
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Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.
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You talk like they don’t kick dreams around downtown.
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One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.
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Love is a naked shadow On a gnarled and naked tree.
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Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records - Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races.
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Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.
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Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
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To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'
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In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
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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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O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be!
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Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
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Why should it be my loneliness, Why should it be my song, Why should it be my dream deferred overlong?
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When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
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They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed - I, too, am America.
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It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.