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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
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Journalist
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Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
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More quotes by Langston Hughes
This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.
Langston Hughes
Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul
Langston Hughes
It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering I want to be white, hidden in the aspirations of his people, to Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!
Langston Hughes
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
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-
Langston Hughes
Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
Langston Hughes
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
Langston Hughes
I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
Langston Hughes
Reach Up Your Hand... and take a star.
Langston Hughes
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Langston Hughes
Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
Langston Hughes
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
Langston Hughes
Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.
Langston Hughes
Money and art are far apart.
Langston Hughes
I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
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
I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Langston Hughes
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
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