"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."

"You are white — yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me — although you’re older — and white — and somewhat more free."

"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."

"Langston Hughes' poem, "I've Known Rivers," became the rallying cry for black Americans to take pride in their color, the reverberations of that attitude reached the Africans in the then French and British colonies."

"Dream within a dream, Our dream deferred. Good morning, daddy! Ain’t you heard?"

"[T]here have not been that many black artists that visible for black youth. There was Langston Hughes, but he was the only one and that was thirty-five to forty years ago. And men of the Negro Renaissance were not given to get outside of Harlem, really."

"He came after me. At the time, I was not published at all, in '61, '62. I was not a popular Black poet, because some of the things I said ran very counter to a line that was the line in Black poetry at the time. And there was a lot of sexism involved too in those days-not that there isn't now, but it was particularly then...I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I think it had a lot to do with it, that he was closeted."

"The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you — Then, it will be true."

"A certain amount of nothing in a dream deferred."

"Daddy, daddy, daddy, All I want is you. You can have me, baby — but my lovin’ days is through. A certain amount of impotence in a dream deferred."

"There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred."

"You talk like they don’t kick dreams around downtown."

"Why should it be my loneliness, Why should it be my song, Why should it be my dream deferred overlong?"

"What happens to a dream deferred? Daddy, ain’t you heard?"

"Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear."

"What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.Or does it explode?"

"For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly."

"My motto, As I live and learn, is: Dig And Be Dug In Return."

"You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word “Negro” is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow."

"When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left."

"Good evening, daddy I know you’ve heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred"

"I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread."

"Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, The mountains and the endless plain — All, all the stretch of these great green states — And make America again!"

"O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe."

"I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek — And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak."

"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."

"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."

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it."

"If I were marooned on a desert island...I would miss...Jackie Ormes's cute drawings"

"O, let America be America again — The land that never has been yet — And yet must be — the land where every man is free."

"Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be."

"While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve — and hate will die unborn. Love — and chains are broken."

"Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly."

"Love is a naked shadow On a gnarled and naked tree."

"I was so sick last night I Didn't hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn't know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that Almost made me blind."

"The stars went out and so did the moon. The singer stopped playing and went to bed While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that's dead."

"I swear to the Lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me."

"Sure, call me any ugly name you choose — The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!"

"Way Down South in Dixie (Break the heart of me) They hung my black young lover To a cross roads tree."

"I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong."

"They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed — I, too, am America."

"The night is beautiful, So are the faces of my people."

"I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

"I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

"O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath — America will be!"

"Your tenderness and terrorization, your prose sentences — like Bernini graves, staggeringly expensive, Italianate, warm, sentences once-and-for-all."

"His dogmatism is more wild and personal than we are accustomed to, completely unspoiled by the hedging "equanimity" that weakens the style and temperament of so many of our serious writers. His murderous intuitive phrases are famous; but at the same time his mind is essentially conservative and takes as much joy in rescuing the reputation of a sleeping good writer as in chloroforming a mediocre one."

"Randall had a great flair for the poetry of desperation."

"Over many years (I am almost 72) so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me—it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry. Some poets—like Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, Randall Jarrell, Jean Valentine, Audre Lorde, Hayden Carruth, Jane Cooper, June Jordan, Joy Harjo, Clayton Eshelman—have been my friends, we’ve been comrades in exchanging work and encouraging each other"

"Jarrell's stylistic particularities have been hard for critics to hear and describe, both because the poems call readers' attention instead to their characters and because Jarrell's particular powers emerge so often from mimesis of speech. Jarrell's style responds to the alienations it delineates by incorporating or troping speech and conversation, linking emotional events within one person's psyche to speech acts that might take place between persons … Jarrell's style pivots on his sense of loneliness and on the intersubjectivity he sought as a response."