Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning — because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

Lorraine Hansberry
Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

Lorraine Hansberry
I think that the glorious thing about the human race is that it does change the world — constantly. The world or 'life' may seem to more often overwhelm the human being's capacity for struggling against being overwhelmed which is remarkable and exhilarating.

Lorraine Hansberry
Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey!... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress.

Lorraine Hansberry
Don't get up. Just sit a while and think. Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Lorraine Hansberry
Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams — but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.

Lorraine Hansberry
Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women.

Lorraine Hansberry
Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.

Lorraine Hansberry
It is still yesterday in Africa. It will take millions of tomorrows to rectify what has been done here.

Lorraine Hansberry
Big Walter used to say, he'd get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, 'Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.'

Lorraine Hansberry
Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.

Lorraine Hansberry
Beneatha: You didn't tell us what Alaiyo means... for all I know, you might be calling me Little Idiot or something...... Asagai: It means... it means One for Whom Bread—Food—Is Not Enough.

Lorraine Hansberry
It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.

Lorraine Hansberry
Yes... weep now, darling, weep. Let us both weep. That is the first thing: to let ourselves feel again.... Then, tomorrow, we shall make something strong of this sorrow.

Lorraine Hansberry
One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.

Lorraine Hansberry
Sidney responding to being called a fool:
Always have been. A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people want to be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is—energy and energy can move things.

Lorraine Hansberry
I didn't make this world! It was given to me this way.

Lorraine Hansberry
I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

Lorraine Hansberry
I'm just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything?... I'm not going to be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe. I don't even think about that. I just get so tired of Him getting the credit for things the human race achieves through its own effort. Now, there simply is no God. There's only man. And it's he who makes miracles.

Lorraine Hansberry
American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is.

Lorraine Hansberry
Once upon a time freedom used to be life-now it's money. I guess the world really do change.

Lorraine Hansberry
I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

Lorraine Hansberry
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.

Lorraine Hansberry
A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men — and people in general.

Lorraine Hansberry
Sometimes it's like I can see the future stretched out in front of me — just as plain as day. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me — a big, looming blank space — full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don't have to be.

Lorraine Hansberry
What you ain't never understood is that I ain't got nothing, don't own nothing, ain't never really wanted nothing that wasn't for you. There ain't nothing as precious to me...There ain't nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else—

Lorraine Hansberry
Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic—to be young, gifted and black.

Lorraine Hansberry
The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.

Lorraine Hansberry
I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!

Lorraine Hansberry
I happen to believe that most people — and this is where I differ from many of my contemporaries, or at least as they express themselves — I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is.

Lorraine Hansberry