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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
Emotion
Successfully
Creative
Applied
Possible
Reactions
Individual
Emotions
Political
Express
Writing
Poetry
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Believe
Writer
Truthfully
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More quotes by Langston Hughes

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This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
Langston Hughes
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Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.
Langston Hughes
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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
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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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
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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
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Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?
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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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
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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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Money and art are far apart.
Langston Hughes
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They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.
Langston Hughes
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I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
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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LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.
Langston Hughes
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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
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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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Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
Langston Hughes
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For poems are like rainbows they escape you quickly.
Langston Hughes
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Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.
Langston Hughes