Langston Quotes & Sayings

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now i wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house
My Ma died in a shack.
I wonder were i'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black? — Langston Hughes

When a man starts out to build a world,
He starts first with himself — Langston Hughes

Oh, there was no doubt about it, I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to fuck her so bad I couldn't sit properly. I wanted to fuck her, make sweet love to her, do very bad things to her. It was crazy fucking beautiful - the need I had for this woman. — K. Langston

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois's learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. — Barack Obama

The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that. — Rachel Cohn

Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake — Langston Hughes

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind, — Langston Hughes

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. — Langston Hughes

Hope I never love someone so much that they could hurt me the way Langston was hurt, so wounded all he could do was cry and mope around the house and ask me to make him peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the crusts cut off, then play Boggle with him, which of course I always did, because I usually do whatever Langston wants me to do. — Rachel Cohn

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. — Langston Hughes

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a -

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a -

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!
Dream Boogie

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h! — Langston Hughes

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind? — Langston Hughes

I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet. — Langston Hughes

We could've been a still photo, the kind from a booth at the mall where two dollars went in and a strip of three shots came out. Our image wasn't the first shot, the one that was always frantic and unfocused. It wasn't the second shot either--laughing and silly. No, this was the final image--the serious shot--where the couple realized they wanted a good picture to remember the moment by and couldn't afford to screw the last one up. — Elizabeth Langston

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. — Langston Hughes

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. — Langston Hughes

Camarin and I are both baffled by the pleasure humans find with bowling. The noise is maddening, the equipment unsanitary, and the repetition boring. — Elizabeth Langston

Love is a lot of things. It's a hard place to fall and a soft place to land. It's give and take, push and pull. Love can bring out the absolute best or worst in us. But, when you find a love worth fightin' for, that's true love. And no matter the struggle or compromise, you can't walk away from that. Now ask yourself, is he worth fightin' for? — K. Langston

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home. — Langston Hughes

Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid. — Langston Hughes

Since the day I met you, I've felt like I could fly. My heart is lighter and when I'm with you, there's no place else I'd rather be. Your beautiful smile and that feisty mouth have brought my dull world back to life. — K. Langston

God in his infinite wisdom
Did not make me very wise-
So when my actions are stupid
They hardly take God by surprise. — Langston Hughes

Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.- — Langston Hughes

Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying. — Langston Hughes

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied. — Langston Hughes

Peace
We passed their graves:
The dead men there,
Winners or losers,
Did not care.
In the dark
They could not see
Who had gained
The victory. — Langston Hughes

Langston has been in love. Twice. His first big romance ended so badly that he had to leave — Rachel Cohn

The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom? — Haven Kimmel

I loved my friend
He went away from me
There's nothing more to say
The poem ends,
Soft as it began-
I loved my friend. — Langston Hughes

Life dosent frighten me at all. — Langston Hughes

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. — Langston Hughes

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better. — Langston Hughes

Bow down and pray in fear and trembling, go way back in the dark afraid; or work harder and harder; or stumble and learn; or raise up your fist and strike-but once the idea comes into your head you'll never be the same again. Oh, test tube of life! Crucible of the South, find the right powder and you'll never be the same again-the cotton will blaze and the cabins will burn and the chains will be broken and men, all of a sudden, will shakes hands, black men and white men, like steel meeting steel! — Langston Hughes

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud. — Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear. — Langston Hughes

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree. — Langston Hughes

Because shoes got by devilish ways will burn your feet. — 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. — Langston Hughes

You don't look like a genie."
"Palazzo pants and sequined vests don't cut it in the United States. — Elizabeth Langston

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas — Langston Hughes

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along. — Langston Hughes

Down Where I Am
Too many years
Beatin' at the door
I done beat my
Both fists sore.
Too many years
Tryin' to get up there
Done broke my ankles down,
Got nowhere.
Too many years
Climbin' that hill,
'Bout out of breath.
I got my fill.
I'm gonna plant my feet
On solid ground.
If you want to see me,
Come down. — Langston Hughes

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye. — Langston Hughes

Fear is stupid. So are regrets. -Marilyn Monroe — K. Langston

Rest at pale evening ... A tall slim tree ... Night coming tenderly Black like me — Langston Hughes

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help. — Langston Hughes

Ku Klux"

They took me out
To some lonesome place.
They said, "Do you believe
In the great white race?"

I said, "Mister,
To tell you the truth,
I'd believe in anything
If you'd just turn me loose."

The white man said, "Boy,
Can it be
You're a-standin' there
A-sassin' me?"

They hit me in the head
And knocked me down.
And then they kicked me
On the ground.

A klansman said, "Nigger,
Look me in the face ---
And tell me you believe in
The great white race. — Langston Hughes

As I Grew Older"

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun -
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky -
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun! — Langston Hughes

Reach Up Your Hand ... and take a star. — Langston Hughes

LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words. — Langston Hughes

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. — Langston Hughes

You see, books had been happening to me. — Langston Hughes

I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust! — Langston Hughes

White folks sure is a case!" She laid three slices of bread on top of the stove. "So spoiled with colored folks waiting on 'em all their days! Don't know what they'll do in heaven, 'cause I'm gonna sit down up there myself. — Langston Hughes

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow. — Langston Hughes

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help. — Langston Hughes

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred. — Langston Hughes

To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!' — Langston Hughes

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. — Langston Hughes

Have you ever experienced human love?"

"Yes. Once."

Regret shadowed his face. "Then why would you be willing to repeat it?"

"What we learn is worth more than what we lose. — Elizabeth Langston

His arm slid around my shoulders and drew me to him. It was odd, sitting there under the veil of darkness, watching the neighborhood settle down. Lamps burned in windows. TVs flickered. A few houses down, the rhythmic thud of a basketball on concrete and muffled laughter alerted us to the only other people outside on this glorious fall night.

"This is a perfect date," I said.

He tensed. "You'd call it a date?"

"Sure. You wouldn't?"

He looked down at me, his eyes glittering in the faint light. "I thought American girls liked more formality in a date."

"More money is what you mean." I smiled. "It's a date. Don't argue with me."

"I never do. — Elizabeth Langston

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry
I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die. — Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly. — Langston Hughes

Believing everything she read
In the daily news,
(No in-between to choose)
She thought that only
One side won,
Not that BOTH
Might lose. — Langston Hughes

Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes. — Langston Hughes

Emery was kneeling outside "gardening" when Ceony and Langston stepped through the illusion that masked the paper magician's house. He had positioned himself outside the curving garden of meticulously crafted paper flowers, and seemed to be replacing all the red, tulip-shaped flower heads with blue, lily-shaped ones. Fennel chewed on the discarded spells as Emery worked, crumpling them in his paper mouth and then spitting the balls into an overturned trash receptacle. — Charlie N. Holmberg

What is the verdict?"

"There is always hope." His face softened. "However, it's unlikely your brain damage will improve."

He'd given me the answer I'd expected and dreaded.

I shut my eyes and sagged into the pillows. I'd braced myself for this result, but I'd wanted a miracle so badly that it was painful to hear the truth.

Sunlight pressed in on me, trying to cheer me up. I would resist a moment longer. This room, the quilt, my closed eyes - they formed a serene barrier against the world, although it wasn't clear to me if I wanted to keep the scary stuff out or the scared me in. — Elizabeth Langston

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe. — Langston Hughes

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

Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer? — Langston Hughes

I swear to the Lord,I still can't see,Why Democracy means,Everybody but me. — Langston Hughes

Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work. — Langston Hughes

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around. — Langston Hughes

Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the disuniting of America and warnings of the clash of civilizations. As Langston Hughes sang, Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe. — Ronald Takaki

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding. — Langston Hughes

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job. — Langston Hughes

Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams
what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred
I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then, fifteen years later, I started to make real money. — Anne Lamott

Life Is Fine"

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine! — Langston Hughes

if you're going to use the word 'dream' in a poem, you had better be langston hughes. — Jewelle L. Gomez

I've been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'
But I don't care! I'm still here! — Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, who wrote, "That Justice is a blind goddess/Is a thing to which we black are wise:/Her bandage hides two festering sores/That once perhaps were eyes." As — C. Arthur Ellis Jr

My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast. — Langston Hughes

I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies. — Langston Hughes

Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on — Langston Hughes

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake
And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake. — Langston Hughes

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly. — Langston Hughes

I hope I never love someone so much that they could hurt me the way Langston was hurt. — Rachel Cohn

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man. — Langston Hughes

I think it must be one of those things where no one's wrong and everybody loses. — Elizabeth Langston

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. — Langston Hughes

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from. — Langston Hughes

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

Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know. — Langston Hughes

That's a nice quote," Langston said. "Underline it and fold down the page for me, will you?" I did as instructed. — Rachel Cohn

There is no color line in death. — Langston Hughes

I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn't give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.

"I must go now," I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. "Thank you for the book."

He drew me into his embrace and sighed. "Thank you for the stars. — Elizabeth Langston

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants. — Langston Hughes

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism. — Langston Hughes

Memory loss is strange. It's like showing up for a movie after it's started. I'm sure I've missed something. I don't know if it's important or not. So I do the best I can to lose myself in the story and hope the gaps don't matter. Later, I can look it up, or someone will remind me, or maybe it's perfectly fine to not know. — Elizabeth Langston

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you. — Langston Hughes