Arna Bontemps Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

Yet would we die as some have done:
Beating a way for the rising sun.

Arna Bontemps
How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored.

Arna Bontemps
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields My brother's sons are gathering stalk and root, Small wonder then my children glean in fields They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

Arna Bontemps
On the Harlem Renaissance:
When we were not too busy having fun, we were shown off and exhibited and presented in scores of places, to all kinds of people. And we heard the sighs of wonder, amazement and sometimes admiration when it was whispered and announced that here was one of the "New Negroes."

Arna Bontemps
Come on in, suh, if you's a-mind to. I'm ready and waiting, me. I ain't been afeared of a nachal man, and I don't know's I mind the old Massa hisself. I ain't been afeared of thunder and lightning, and I don't reckon I'll mind the hurricane. I don't know's I'll mind when the trees bend down and the tombstones commence to bust. Don't reckon I'll mind, suh. Come on in.

Arna Bontemps
He [Augie] was a thin, undersized boy, smaller for his years than any other child on the place, and he had round pop-eyes. But he enjoyed a certain prestige among the black youngsters, and older folks as well, because of the legend that he was lucky, a legend that had attended him since birth due to a mysterious veil with which he had entered the world.

Arna Bontemps