Countee Quotes & Sayings

I have a rendezvous with life. — Countee Cullen

Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow. — Countee Cullen

If You Should Go
Love, leave me like the light,
The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
When it has slipped away.
Go quietly; a dream,
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer's face. — Countee Cullen

My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me — Countee Cullen

Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features — Countee Cullen

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars, is no less lovely being dark — Countee Cullen

Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black. — Countee Cullen

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth. — Countee Cullen

We shall not always plant while others reap — Countee Cullen

Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me. — Countee Cullen

All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood. — Countee Cullen

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse. — Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind — Countee Cullen

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage. — Countee Cullen

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death. — Countee Cullen

I cut my teeth as the black raccoon
For implements of battle. — Countee Cullen

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover. — Countee Cullen

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone. — Countee Cullen

What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set — Countee Cullen

And if I please you so, my lover,
Remember praise is comely. — Countee Cullen

Your love to me was like an unread book. — Countee Cullen

We were not made to eternally weep. — Countee Cullen

The key to all strange things is in thy heart ... / My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas. — Countee Cullen

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks. — Countee Cullen

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds. — Countee Cullen

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching. — Countee Cullen

The truth is ... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. — Countee Cullen

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine. — Countee Cullen

Man dreams that he is more than a leaf on a tree.'
-Leaves by Countee Cullen — Countee Cullen

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing. — Countee Cullen

In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things - read and write - and wait. — Countee Cullen

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? — Countee Cullen

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. — Countee Cullen