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I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes
Age: 66 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 22
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
Fiction
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Emotion
Successfully
Creative
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Emotions
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More quotes by Langston Hughes

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I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Langston Hughes
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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 aren?t it doesn?t matter.
Langston Hughes
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A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.
Langston Hughes
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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
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Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.
Langston Hughes
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What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
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What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
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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
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I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.
Langston Hughes
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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
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I stay cool, and dig all jive, That's the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.
Langston Hughes
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An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
Langston Hughes
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Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.
Langston Hughes
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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
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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
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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
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There is no color line in art.
Langston Hughes
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For poems are like rainbows they escape you quickly.
Langston Hughes
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Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes
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Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
Langston Hughes