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

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

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

"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."

[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.