Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
I stay cool, and dig all jive,That's the way I stay alive.My motto, as I live and learn, isDig and be dugIn return.
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, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.Tomorrow,I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dar...
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
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 tr...
When peoples cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
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...
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
God in his infinite wisdomDid not make me very wise-So when my actions are stupidThey hardly take God by surprise.
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,Help us to seeThat without the dust the rainbowWould not be.
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...
THEY WERE PEOPLE who went in for Negroes—Michael and Anne—the Carraways. But not in the social-service, philanthropic sort of way, no. They saw no use in helping a race that was already too charming a...
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.