Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.

And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.