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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

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.

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