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" My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong. "

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" Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people's problems were worse than ours. "

Langston Hughes

Relationship

People

" Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it. "

" I must never write when I do not want to write. "

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

Langston Hughes

Dream

Dry

" Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. "

" Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. "

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

Langston Hughes

Censorship

Color

" Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine. "

" One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud. "

" Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. "

Langston Hughes

Fast

Dreams

" When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul. "

" Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves. "

" Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying. "

Langston Hughes

Writing

" I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet. "

Langston Hughes

Class

Always

" 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. "

" Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. "

" The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror. "

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

" Violent anger makes me physically ill. "

Langston Hughes

Physically

Violent

" My soul has grown deep like the rivers. "

Langston Hughes

Grown

Deep

" An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. "

" Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. "

" My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America. "

" I will not take 'but' for an answer. "

" To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!' "

" Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work. "

" 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. "

" I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go. "

Langston Hughes

You

Almost

" 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. "

" 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 are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. "