Quotable! – Langston Hughes 1902-1967

James Mercer Langston Hughes – an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Image from NYDailynews.

“I swear to the Lord I still can’t see why Democracy means Everybody but me.”

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?… Or does it explode?”

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”

Quotable! – Nikki Giovanni

Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, Jr. – poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Image from Feminine Fusion.

“Nothing is easy to the unwilling.”

“Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.”

“We love because it’s the only true adventure.”

“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.”

“If you don’t understand yourself you don’t understand anybody else.”

“show me someone not full of herself and I’ll show you a hungry person.”

Quotable! – August Wilson

August Wilson – (1945-2005) two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II, Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney and Radio Golf. Image from the Boston Globe.

“You can put law on paper but that don’t make it right.”

“You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.”

“My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn’t recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change it to create art.”

“Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone’s disbelief.”

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”

Quotable! – W.E.B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868-1963) sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, editor, and author. Image from AAIHS.

“A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.”

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

Quotable! – Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler, (1947-2006) award-winning science fiction author of Kindred, Dawn, Patternmaster and the Parable Series. Image from Stagen Studios.

“Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.”

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn’t bother me. It’s other people doing the calling that bothers me.”

Quotable – Toni Morrison

                                           Toni Morrison
                   (African-American novelist and professor)
                                Image from Pinterest