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.

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

We were not made to eternally weep.

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

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

- Countee Cullen

I have a rendezvous with life.

- Countee Cullen