Langston Hughes
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.
Dreams 1923
James Baldwin
“To look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep.
This is not the land of the free; it is only sporadically the home of the brave.”
John Dos Passos
“I never went back on a guy yet, but Jez, George, it's give and take in this world.”
Manhattan Transfer 1925
Emily Dickinson
Me, change! Me, alter!
Then I will, when on the Everlasting Hill
A Smaller Purple grows—
At sunset, or a lesser glow
Flickers upon Cordillera—
At Day’s superior close!
1862
Stephen King
“Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.”
It 1986
William Carlos Williams
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment
a sort of renewal
even
From The Descent 1948
Flannery O’Connor
“I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
Wise Blood 1952