“Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.”

“America is a dream.The poet says it was promises.The people say it is promises—that will come true.The people do not always say things out loud,Nor write them down on paper.The people often holdGreat thoughts in their deepest heartsAnd sometimes only blunderingly express them,Haltingly and stumbling say them,And faultily put them into practice.The people do not always understand each other.But there is, somewhere there,Always the trying to understand,And the trying to say,"You are a man. Together we are building our land.”

“Life is for the living.Death is for the dead.Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.”

“HarlemWhat happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.Or does it explode?”

“Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, "Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small?”

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!”

“What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”