But was that why Negroes were poor, because they were dancers, jazzers, clowns? . . . The other way round would be better: dancers because of their poverty; singers because they suffered; laughing all the time because they must forget.... It’s more like that, thought Sandy. ― Langston Hughes,

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The prerequisite for writing is having something to say. ― Langston Hughes

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Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it. ― Langston Hughes

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My soul has grown deep like the rivers. ― Langston Hughes

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I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books — where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas. ― Langston Hughes

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Poetry is the human soul entire Squeezed like a lemon or a lime, Drop by drop into atomic words". ― Langston Hughes

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

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Tell all my mourners To mourn in red- Cause there ain't no sense In my bein' dead. ― Langston Hughes

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I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind— And I see that my own hands can make The world that’s in my mind. Then let us hurry, comrades, The road to find. ― Langston Hughes

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I will not take ‘but’ for an answer. ― Langston Hughes

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