For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.