15 Great Quotes by Langston Hughes

  1. Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
  2. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
  3. Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
  4. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
  5. Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul – the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
  6. In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
  7. Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people – the beauty within themselves.
  8. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.
  9. I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.
  10. Writing is like travelling. It’s wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.
  11. I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
  12. One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.
  13. When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
  14. I will not take ‘but’ for an answer.
  15. I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.