Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
—Langston Hughes
I play it cool, and dig all jive, and that’s the reason I stay alive.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Life
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Equality
I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing … not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Authors & Writing
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Humor
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Ambition, Vision, Dreams, Forethought, Inspiration, Foresight
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Goals
I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Democracy
Well, Son, I tell you, life for me aint been no crystal stair.
Its been hard and bare and rough places on the floor,
But all the while I’se been climbing, and going forth
In the dark, cause there ain’t been no light.
So don’t you sit down cause its kinds hard,
Don’t you quit because its rough
Cause you see, I’se still climbing
And life for me aint been no crystal stair.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Poverty
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 overlie a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy lead. Or does it explode?
—Langston Hughes
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Weather, Rain
I swear to the Lord
I still can’t see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
—Langston Hughes
Topics: Democracy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Saroyan American Playwright, Novelist
William S. Burroughs American Novelist
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
Richard Wright American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Edgar Lee Masters American Poet, Novelist
William Dean Howells American Writer, Critic
Charles W. Chesnutt American Novelist
Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
Truman Capote American Novelist