Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.

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.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.