Langston Hughes — "I have been a stranger in a strange land."

"Negro artists, let’s create, even the most serious among us, our own beauty."

"If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad…"

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself."

"I’m a Negro—and beautiful!"

"I have had my say about the world, and the world has had its say about me."