African American writers have long shaped literature, culture, and thought through their words—illuminating the struggles, triumphs, and complexity of Black life. Their insights resonate across generations, inspiring readers to reflect, act, and create. Below is a curated list of 20 powerful quotes from some of the most influential African American writers:

1. Octavia E. Butler

“You don’t start out writing good stuff… one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

2. bell hooks

“No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much.’ No woman has ever written enough.”

3. Angie Thomas

“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.”

4. Robert Hayden

“Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.”

5. James Baldwin

“All art is a kind of confession… All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story.”

6. Alice Walker

“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?”

7. Toni Morrison

“A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.”

8. Zora Neale Hurston

“How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

9. James Baldwin

“Talent is insignificant. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”

10. James Baldwin

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world.”

11. James Baldwin

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

12. Toni Morrison

“If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

13. Maya Angelou

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

14. Alice Walker

“There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.”

15. Pearl Cleage

“Putting words on paper regularly is part of the necessary discipline of writing.”

16. Maya Angelou

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”

17. Nikki Giovanni

“You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over your shoulder, you’ll never write.”

18. Lucille Clifton

“People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that’s a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.”

19. June Jordan

“The role of the poet… is to deserve the trust of people who know that what you do is work with words.”

20. W.E.B. Du Bois

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

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Closing Thought

These words remind us that writing is not simply about craft—it is about courage, truth-telling, and endurance. Whether you’re starting your first journal entry or working on a manuscript, may these voices push you to keep writing, keep creating, and keep telling the stories only you can tell.

artwork credit: An AI-generated art visual of African American writers, created by the Art Library Deco staff