"To create a market for your writing..." - Quote by 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.”

“There is no color line in art.”

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

“I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.”

“Good dialogue is not real speech-it's the illusion of real speech.”

“This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.”

“I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.”

“I've never had a "hankering" to direct. I can perform, but I can't write on that level. I tend to go off on tangents. Directing also requires a kind of specificity and I don't have it.”

“I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'”