Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair

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

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

There is no color line in art.