Langston Hughes

"I am so tired of waiting, Aren’t you, For the world to become good And beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife And cut the world in two – And see what worms are eating At the rind."

"손바닥으로 하늘을 가리려한다"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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!"

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

"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!"

"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."

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

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

"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"

"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?"

"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?"

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"I was always interested in fair play, probably from reading the works of Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Charles Dickens as a child. I was always concerned about justice and injustice. To the extent that I could understand the issues, I was always on the side of the underdog. I'm on the same side today."

"Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts-and depressed that he has done so little with them…Hughes, in his sermons, blues and prayers, has working for him the power and the beat of Negro speech and Negro music. Negro speech is vivid largely because it is private. It is a kind of emotional shorthand-or sleight-of-hand-by means of which Negroes express, not only their relationship to each other, but their judgment of the white world. And, as the white world takes over this vocabulary-without the faintest notion of what it really means the vocabulary is forced to change. The same thing is true of Negro music, which has had to become more and more complex in order to continue to express any of the private or collective experience. Hughes knows the bitter truth behind these hieroglyphics: what they are designed to protect, what they are designed to convey. But he has not forced them into the realm of art where their meaning would become clear and overwhelming. "Hey, pop!/Re-bop!/Mop!" conveys much more on Lenox Avenue than it does in this book, which is not the way it ought to be. Hughes is an American Negro poet and has no choice but to be acutely aware of it. He is not the first American Negro to find the war between his social and artistic responsibilities all but irreconcilable."

"I did not read any Langston Hughes until I was an adult, but I remember being carried away by him and Gwendolyn Brooks."

"(At National Black Theater performance) I was in awe of the words I witnessed that day. It was the first time that I heard the works of writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka. I heard poetry that was about me, that was very immediate. I connected to it in a visceral way. That experience moved me so profoundly that I went home and that night I wrote my first batch of poems. It was like the floodgates opened. That reading empowered me with a voice and gave me permission to express everything that had been festering in me for years. So I just started experimenting with language and writing all kinds of things."

"About the time I was 17 and graduated from high school, I like to say that I ran away from home. I went to Harlem, and that was a most beautiful place where, fortunately for me, I came into, or rather, ran into, the hands of some wonderful people; people who formed an important part of the so-called Black Renaissance. They were people like Langston Hughes, [[w:Wallace Thurman|Wally Thurmond, Bud Fisher, all really wonderful writers."