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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
Valid
Emotion
Successfully
Creative
Applied
Possible
Reactions
Individual
Emotions
Political
Express
Writing
Poetry
Directives
Believe
Writer
Truthfully

More quotes by 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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Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.
Langston Hughes
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Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes
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I will not take but for an answer.
Langston Hughes
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The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
Langston Hughes
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Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
Langston Hughes
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Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
Langston Hughes
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One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.
Langston Hughes
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Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
Langston Hughes
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I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
Langston Hughes
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A dream deferred is a dream denied.
Langston Hughes
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Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.
Langston Hughes
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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.
Langston Hughes
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Reach Up Your Hand... and take a star.
Langston Hughes
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Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.
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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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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I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.
Langston Hughes
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For poems are like rainbows they escape you quickly.
Langston Hughes
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Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
Langston Hughes