Robert Hayden

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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 abstractions police and threaten us.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Struggle
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Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Art
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As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Writing
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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
Collection: Believe
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This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Beautiful
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[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
Collection: Reality
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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 day. It just makes sense.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Talking
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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 made banked fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Father
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Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.
- Robert Hayden
Collection: Dance