Columnist Quotes

“Hang yourself, poet, in your own words.Otherwise, you are dead.”

“Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.”

“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.”

“A world I dream where black or white,Whatever race you be,Will share the bounties of the EarthAnd every man is free.”

“The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.”

“Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.”

“I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.”

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

“That Justice is a blind goddessIs a thing to which we black are wise:Her bandage hides two festering soresThat once perhaps were eyes.”

“Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas”

“Your explanation depresses me," I said. "Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.”

“Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Do you know that there are libraries in our country that will not stock a book by a Negro writer, not even as a gift? There are towns where Negro newspapers and magazines cannot be sold except surreptitiously. There are American magazines that have never published anything by Negroes. There are film studios that have never hired a Negro writer. Censorship for us begins at the color line.”

“These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.”

“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.”

“You and I By Henry Alford My hand is lonely for your clasping, dear; My ear is tired waiting for your call. I want your strength to help, your laugh to cheer; Heart, soul and senses need you, one and all. I droop without your full, frank sympathy; We ought to be together—you and I; We want each other so, to comprehend The dream, the hope, things planned, or seen, or wrought. Companion, comforter and guide and friend, As much as love asks love, does thought ask thought. Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly, We ought to be together, you and I.”

“There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.”

“O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.”

“Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”

“Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.”

“Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.”

“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.”

“Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.”