I am amazed that my work of Dylan was chosen as his portrait,

Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.

Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?