Countee Cullen Quotations

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Your love to me was like an unread book.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed.

Death cut the strings that gave me life, And handed me to Sorrow, The only kind of middle wife My folks could beg or borrow.

Lord, I fashion dark gods, too, Daring even to give You Dark despairing features

Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, So I make an idle boast; Jesus of the twice-turned cheek Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part.

Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes.

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods Black men fashion out of rods

I have a rendezvous with life.

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover.

What is last year's snow to me, Last year's anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, White stars, is no less lovely being dark

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind

All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood.

I cut my teeth as the black raccoon-- For implements of battle.

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

We were not made to eternally weep.

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.

We shall not always plant while others reap

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

The play is done, the crowds depart; and see / That twisted tortured thing hung from a tree, / Swart victim of a newer Calvary.