[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

- Robert Hayden

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

- Robert Hayden

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstract…

- Robert Hayden

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, the dark ships move, the dark ships move, their bright ironical names like jests of kindness on a murderer's…

- Robert Hayden

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

- Robert Hayden

I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

- Robert Hayden

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

- Robert Hayden

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new …

- Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather…

- Robert Hayden