320 Quotes by Langston Hughes

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

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

I will not take 'but' for an answer.

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

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.

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

One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.

Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

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.