Langston Hughes

I don't mind dying, but I hate to leave my friends.

The road to freedom is a hard one, but it is worth the struggle.

I remember the days when I was a kid and I used to go to the movies and sit in the balcony. And I would see the white kids downstairs, and I would be up there with all the other colored kids.

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Negroes is that they are so much like everybody else.

If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

I've been a victim of the white press, the black press, and the communist press.

I'm not a communist, but I've been called one.

I have written a poem about a pig.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a ghost in my own life.

I would like to be a part of a world where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

The moon is a disc of silver, the stars are tiny diamonds, and the night is a black velvet cloth.

I've been a dishwasher, a cook, a busboy, a waiter, a laundress, a delivery boy, a truck driver, a chauffeur, a gardener, a bellhop, a doorman, a houseman, a janitor, a porter, a longshoreman, a seaman, a coal miner, a steel worker, a factory hand, a farm hand, a construction worker, a ditch digger, a street sweeper, a garbage collector, a rag picker, a shoe shine boy, a newsboy, a messenger boy, a telegraph boy, a stable boy, a jockey, a boxer, a wrestler, a dancer, a singer, a musician, an actor, a comedian, a storyteller, a lecturer, a journalist, an editor, a publisher, a librarian, a teacher, a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor, a minister, a politician, a revolutionary, a philosopher, a scientist, an inventor, an artist, a writer, a poet.

I have no desire to be white. I have no desire to be black. I have no desire to be anything but myself.

The blues are a part of me.

I am a Negro. I am a writer. I am an American. I am a human being.

I write about black people because I am black.

My life has been a long song.

I love the night, because it is dark and mysterious.

I am a river, and I flow.