I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows, Help us to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.

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

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.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

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